police – Macleans.cahttp://www.macleans.ca
Canada's national current affairs and news magazine since 1905Thu, 14 Dec 2017 02:34:30 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.3Canada is not immune to reach of terrorist networks, experts sayhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/canadian-involvement-in-new-york-terror-plot-shows-growing-reach-of-isis/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/canadian-involvement-in-new-york-terror-plot-shows-growing-reach-of-isis/#commentsSat, 07 Oct 2017 22:55:36 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=1066995One expert says the case shines a light on the fact that ISIL is thriving well beyond its traditional territory of Iraq and Syria

]]>TORONTO – Experts say the guilty plea from a Canadian teenager who admitted to plotting to bomb major landmarks in New York City underscores the fact that Canada is not immune to the growing global reach of terrorist networks

Officials in the United States released details of Abdulrahman El Bahnasawy’s guilty plea on Friday, months after it was heard by a New York court.

The 19-year-old from Mississauga, Ont. admitted to connecting with operatives with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, as well as conspiring with associates in Pakistan and the Philippines to build car bombs targeting such critical areas as Times Square and the city subway system.

Court documents provided by the U.S. justice department provided few details as to how El Bahnasawy came to espouse extremist beliefs, but imams and scholars alike say the case is a further demonstration that radical messages are reaching a Canadian audience.

Syed Soharwardy of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada said the viewpoints expressed by El Bahnasawy in court documents can be heard at some mosques that permit a narrow interpretation of Islamic scripture. Such messages are frequently reinforced online and on social media, he added.

But Soharwardy said anti-Islamic sentiment in Canada does as much as radical messaging to make susceptible youth feel alienated and more likely to throw their support behind a terrorist organization such as ISIL.

“(Islamophobia) helps others to be radicalized,” he said in a telephone interview from Calgary. “It helps others to feel isolated. It helps others to be marginalized. So that Islamophobia which is going on in our communities . . . until it stops, this is going to continue.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York unsealed the terrorism charges against El Bahnasawy and two other men on Friday, months after they were laid. The other two suspects are identified as Talha Haroon, a 19-year-old U.S. citizen residing in Pakistan, and Russell Salic, 37, from the Philippines.

U.S. authorities allege the three men communicated through Internet messaging applications, allegedly plotting to carry out bombing and shootings in heavily populated areas of New York City during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan in 2016.

They also allege that while in Canada, El Bahnasawy purchased bomb-making materials and helped secure a cabin within driving distance of New York City to use for building the explosive devices and staging the attacks.

El Bahnasawy began communicating with an undercover FBI agent posing as an ISIL supporter, and declared allegiance to the terror group, according to the Canadian teen’s guilty plea.

The documents said El Bahnasawy stated to the agent that “these Americans need an attack” and that he aspired to “create the next 9/11” with plans to come to New York from Canada.

The global nature of the plot and its alleged participants was striking for one researcher working for a group combating various forms of extremist violence.

Amarnath Amarasingam, senior research fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, says the case shines a light on the fact that ISIL is thriving well beyond its traditional territory of Iraq and Syria.

Amarasingam says it would be a mistake to attribute El Bahnasawy’s actions solely to youth and the influence of “shady recruiters.” While little is known about how the teen came to be connected with ISIL, court documents said he initiated contact and was actively seeking advice and support for the plot.

The fact that help was available from his far-flung co-accused, Amarasingam said, is significant.

“We have a young man from Canada receiving bomb making instructions from operatives linked to ISIS’s Khurasan province and financial assistance from ISIS networks in the Philippines,” he said in an email. “This has huge implications for how we approach ISIS’s loss of territory in Iraq and Syria, since it’s clear that their networks elsewhere could pose an equally serious threat in terms of attack planning in Western countries.”

El Bahnasawy is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 12, 2017.

American justice officials said extradition proceedings are ongoing in Pakistan and the Philippines to bring the other two suspects to the U.S. to face the charges.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/canadian-involvement-in-new-york-terror-plot-shows-growing-reach-of-isis/feed/3Who’s policing the police?http://www.macleans.ca/politics/whos-policing-the-police/
Wed, 30 Aug 2017 21:27:18 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?post_type=rdm_video&p=1056683Angelyn Francis explains how Ontario's SIU works and why some people are still skeptical of the oversight body.

]]>The Dafonte Miller case reveals a troubling trust gap for policehttp://www.macleans.ca/opinion/the-dafonte-miller-case-reveals-a-troubling-trust-gap-for-police/
http://www.macleans.ca/opinion/the-dafonte-miller-case-reveals-a-troubling-trust-gap-for-police/#commentsWed, 02 Aug 2017 21:52:29 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=1048979Opinion: Amid allegations of a cover-up in the alleged assault of a teen, the police's request for trust is hard to take

Last week, Toronto police chief Mark Saunders and Mayor John Tory publicly addressed rumours of a police cover-up in the case of Dafonte Miller, a Black teen allegedly beaten by an off-duty police officer and his brother in December of 2016 in Whitby, Ont.; the assault, which was so bad that one of Miller’s eyes will have to be removed, was only investigated four months later. Saunders defended the Toronto Police Service’s handling of the case, claiming that the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), which has since charged the Theriault brothers with aggravated assault, assault with a weapon, and public mischief, worked with the information it had at the time. Meanwhile, Tory reassured Torontonians that he had no reason to doubt the integrity of the Waterloo Police Force officials who will be conducting an investigation into the case.

In short, both Tory and Saunders are asking for trust—and specifically, they’re asking you to ignore the abundance of evidence indicating that policing in Toronto is a broken system. But from interactions on the street to civilian-oversight responses to confrontations in public board rooms, asking for trust is simply an unreasonable request.

Trust is the core of every police force’s relationship with its community. “The ability of the Toronto Police Service to keep Toronto the best and safest place to be has always depended on the trust and support of the people we serve,” wrote Saunders in a January report about modernizing policing in Toronto. “I am committed to this approach as we move forward with implementation, ensuring that transparency, inclusiveness, and community partnerships remain central to everything we do.” For the police, public trust is not merely a matter of optics; information gathering, eyewitness testimony, and other forms of public cooperation all rely on perceptions of trust. A 2015 federal report, Public Confidence in Canadian Institutions, noted that the majority of Canadians held a high degree of confidence in the police and thought that the police were doing a “good job” of interpersonal tasks such as being easy to talk to, treating citizens fairly, responding to calls, and enforcing laws. The survey also noted, however, that Indigenous populations, racialized populations, and Canadians who had reported having contact with the police within the last twelve months gave the police lower marks in these fields.

Given these results, it is not difficult to see why policing in Canada is such a polarizing issue: the views of a majority that holds more confidence in policing than any other institution in Canada, but has had little to no interaction with the police, are often routinely prioritized above the experiences of those most directly affected by the police. When the police ask for public trust, they are asking citizens to reinforce a system of inequality; they are requesting an act that requires an impossible suspension of disbelief from the lived realities of marginalized populations.

After all, history does not look favourably upon the Toronto Police Service. Earlier this year, the Toronto Star reported on police violations of their legal obligation to the SIU. The violations emerged from more than 150 letters sent from the director of the SIU to the chief of police which noted, as the Star reported, that there were “repeated complaints of officers waiting weeks, months, or in one case, nearly four years before reporting serious injuries suffered by members of the public during police interactions.” These problems persist in 2017 despite reports in 2008 and 2011 from André Marin, then Ontario’s ombudsman, calling for “greater independence, rigour, and integrity” in SIU investigations. “It is long past due for the SIU to be provided with the necessary powers and authority to carry out its mandate effectively, credibly and transparently,” he said. Years later, cases such as Dafonte Miller’s leave Ontarians wanting. Howard Morton, the former director of the SIU, has said that the force is now behind the eight-ball with the Miller case: “I don’t think this will be a true investigation and even if it is, the public’s perception will be that it is not,” he told the Star. Even the fact that some believe an institutional cover-up occurred is proof of that diminished confidence.

There is also the problem of leadership within the Toronto Police Service. Saunders is part of a long lineage of police administrators that have remained unresponsive to the hundreds of recommendations proposed by investigators in light of discrimination in policing. Police administrators in Toronto have not only proven unresponsive to allegations of discrimination, but also even incapable of acknowledging its existence. During the G20 protests—which left many peaceful protesters injured by police—Mike McCormack, the head of the Toronto Police Association, claimed that allegations of a culture of silence that served to protect the offending officers were “absolutely absurd.” As CBC reported, the SIU found that “no police were criminally responsible, in part because 11 officers who witnessed the incident couldn’t identify those who allegedly inflicted the injuries.” In 2003, then-chief Julian Fantino denied the existence of systemic racism in the TPS. “Recent controversy has served to remind everyone of the fragile nature of this relationship and how potentially divisive allegations of racial bias can be. Unfortunately, even the perception of such bias has put in question the relationship between some segments of society and the police,” Fantino wrote in the foreword of a 2003 TPS report. “Nevertheless, I remain steadfastly confident that systemic racism does not exist within the Toronto Police Service.”

But Saunders’s failure to concede that misconduct is a possibility in the Miller case flies in the face of more than 40 years of research. In 1976, Donald Raymond Morand identified this culture, popularly referred to as the “blue code” or the “blue wall of silence,” in his Report of the Royal Commission into Metropolitan Toronto Police Practices. Morand, who was sympathetic to the intense responsibilities and expectations carried by the modern policeman, wrote that “when excessive force is used, it is all too easy and tempting to lie to a superior officer and thus escape penalty. When the case comes to court, it then becomes necessary for the officer to commit perjury, to continue the denial which he has already made to his superior officers.” It’s the kind of workplace culture that can reinforce discriminatory practices, and for those who have faced police harassment and brutality, leadership that refuses to acknowledge this culture exists is akin to watching a child who, covering his eyes during a game of hide-and-seek, believes he cannot be seen. It is a failed effort to distort a reality plainly visible to those in the vicinity.

While the SIU is tasked with holding police accountable for use of force, the Toronto Police Services Board (TPSB) uses its mandate “to establish, after consultation with the Chief of Police, overall objectives and priorities for the provision of police services.” But at a TPSB meeting on Jul. 27, police subjected attendees to unwarranted searches prior to gaining entrance to the meeting, a seeming response to a Jun. 15 meeting that stretched nine hours and saw more than 60 community members register to depute the highly contentious School Resource Officer Program. At that meeting, police withheld seats from select attendees and used their bikes to form a blockade to prevent the overflow from entering the meeting room. Rather than meeting the recent increase in scrutiny and public pressure with transparency, the TPSB has added to a growing list of barriers to public engagement, including poor time management of meeting, unwarranted searches, holding a public meeting about police in the police headquarters and, most notably, arresting activist Desmond Cole, who wanted to speak to the Miller case though it had been left off the TPSB meeting agenda. These gestures, like the leadership that compelled them, only further sap the trust that police say they need.

The image of Cole walking, handcuffed and flanked by officers, clearly illustrates why it is so hard for the public to trust the police. Rather than viewing trust as a matter of equity, the police seek it as part of a business-like calculus tied to information-gathering and surveillance; it feels like an instrument in their hands, rather than a guiding principle. The Toronto Police Service’s problems are deep-seated ones, a thread that, once pulled, could consume the entire garment. Rather than acknowledging and addressing the deep inequalities that created the Miller situation and taking action, the mayor and chief of police denied wrongdoing and asked for trust. That’s a leap of faith over a chasm that’s too wide for many communities to jump.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/opinion/the-dafonte-miller-case-reveals-a-troubling-trust-gap-for-police/feed/2How to get the cops out of your Pride paradehttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/how-to-get-the-cops-out-of-your-pride-parade/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/how-to-get-the-cops-out-of-your-pride-parade/#commentsThu, 27 Jul 2017 23:38:51 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=1048229Pride groups in Calgary and other western cities are talking their police out of marching in uniform. The keys appear to be discretion and tact.

Scenes like this one from Toronto’s 2016 Pride parade are increasingly rare.

A Calgary Pride news release Wednesday seemed to be setting off what, this year, is a familiar pattern in some Canadian cities: Pride leadership agrees with LGBTQ activists of colour and Indigenous roots, and ban local police from marching in the annual Pride parade; then the police chief and politicians push back, and the officers’ union howls in protest, and a testy political-cultural spat ensues for weeks or even months.

In Toronto, Chief Mark Saunders decided the police department would officially steer clear of the parade, after Toronto Pride’s board agreed with some of Black Lives Matter’s demands to minimize the visibility of the police because of a long history of abuse and harassment of marginalized groups; Torontoofficers instead marched in uniform in the New York City parade. In Ottawa, Chief Charles Bordeleau intends to personally defy Capital Pride wishes and march next month in uniform. In both Ontario cities, councillors mused about pulling civic funding for Pride if uniformed officers weren’t welcomed.

Yet in Calgary, any such impasse lasted only a few hours—the span between Pride’s morning news release and Chief Roger Chaffin‘s in the afternoon.

“We are obviously disappointed with the decision that police will not be allowed to march in uniform, but we are not going to allow it to undo decades of progress between law enforcement and the LGBTQ community in Calgary,” Chaffin said in his statement. Calgary police will march, but not in uniform. The relationship between the institution and the community matters more than blue garments and floats, the institution decided.

It turns out Chaffin and a deputy chief were part of the meeting in which LGBTQ community members discussed police involvement and intimidation concerns, according to Voices, an advocacy group for LGBTQ and other marginalized groups in Calgary. This initial discussion separates the city’s encounter from that of Ottawa or particularly Toronto, where Black Lives Matter issued their demands during a dramatic sit-in that temporarily halted last year’s parade. In Alberta’s largest city, a private meeting and written statements eased off tensions.

Toronto’s episode helped set a kind of template for demands and conditions for police involvement in Pride; but in Western Canada, another model has emerged for how police react. In Winnipeg, a handful of officers marched in rainbow-heart T-shirts instead of uniforms, and a senior officer said parade organizers’ stanceled to “conversations with the community that we wouldn’t have had otherwise.”

Vancouver Pride and the city’s police agreed in advance on a compromise: officers would march as part of the City of Vancouver’s delegation in the parade, and 20 per cent of officers would be allowed to wear uniforms (Edmonton Pride, meanwhile, accepted police officers in uniform, as in past years).

It’s worth noting that the Calgary Police Association has declined to weigh in thus far; police unions in most cities have reacted to uniform bans with far less restraint than their respective police brass. But so far, Ottawa and Toronto activists have reason to look enviously at how neatly police in Calgary tamped down the sizzle of a situation ready-made to produce controversy and hostility.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/how-to-get-the-cops-out-of-your-pride-parade/feed/1The police saved my queer, Muslim life. And they can be allies for others, too.http://www.macleans.ca/opinion/the-police-saved-my-queer-muslim-life-and-they-can-be-allies-for-others-too/
http://www.macleans.ca/opinion/the-police-saved-my-queer-muslim-life-and-they-can-be-allies-for-others-too/#commentsSun, 25 Jun 2017 17:06:45 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=1032859For many in marginalized communities, the police are our only hope. The journey to fight injustice should not be a zero-sum game.

I’m gay, Muslim, and a person of colour. And I’m able to write this because the police saved my life.

In March of last year, the York Regional Police took me to a hospital and detained me under the Mental Health Act for attempting to kill myself. On that day, if you had asked me if I had any reason to live, I couldn’t give you any. The reasons to die, however, were endless.

As a gay man coming from a conservative Bangladeshi Muslim immigrant family, my parents did not accept me and never would. When I first came out, they responded by offering to help me pray to Allah to become straight. They then offered to arrange a marriage to a woman as a cure. Finally, they pleaded with me to go back into the closet because being openly gay brought great shame to them within their ethnic community.

The reason I was out in the first place was because, while in the closet, I was in an abusive relationship with another man. After leaving him, that man threatened to expose my sexual orientation to my parents. After coming out, that man tormented me with threats of legal action against me. Death, in context, seemed like the only way out of this nightmare.

As I sat in the emergency room on what was the worst day of my life, I could not have asked for a better human being to be by my side. Constable Ian Lavender, the York Regional Police officer who drove me to the hospital, tried everything in his power to make me smile. The constable opened up about his own conservative religious family and tried his best to lighten the mood. At one point, I became morbidly embarrassed as I discovered one of the nurses was a guy I had gone on a date with and still had a crush on. “You have good taste,” the constable said as he checked him out. Then, with an understanding nod, the constable moved and shielded me from the nurse’s view.

I acknowledge that for many queer people of colour, the police are a source of fear and intimidation. In many respects, these protests have done the LGBTQ community a service; systemic racism, anti-black racism, and law enforcement misconduct are real issues inadequately addressed within our community. But I believe we—especially in queer marginalized communities—must also recognize that the police are an institution that provide aid and protection when the system otherwise fails us. After all, according to statistics provided by Rainbow Health Ontario, LGBTQ individuals, especially youth, are as high as seven times more likely to attempt suicide than their cis-heterosexual peers. With our underfunded mental health system, many do not get the help they need. Moreover, many immigrant families, including the one I grew up in, balk at the concept of mental illness and treatment. This leaves many suicidal ethnic and sexual minorities in a crisis situation, with the police often being the ones to first respond. Police departments across Canada know this and train for this.

I’ve seen this firsthand on more than one occasion: One year after the police saved my life, I called them to save another. A queer friend, and fellow ethnic minority, had texted me about killing themself. They were already in the tub; they had already started cutting; they had already started bleeding. Before the police arrived, I pleaded with my friend to call someone for help. They agreed and dialled a Toronto crisis helpline, only to hang up when they were put on hold due to large call volume. Had I not called the police, an institution that is trained to deal with situations like this, my friend would not be alive today.

It is easy to see where the police have been unjust to the queer community, in part because of the publicity and protest such acts garner. However, the police’s role as protector and provider of aid often goes unnoticed. For my friend who is HIV-positive—who fears every hookup will end up with him being beaten when he reveals his status—the police are his valued ally. For my friend who was shunned by his gay peers because they sided with the man that punched him, the police are there for him when his peers are not. When a pro-ISIS Twitter account started distributing my picture amongst themselves, and when Muslims sent me death threats after I criticized some Muslims for endorsing homophobia in the wake of Omar Mateen’s attack on the Orlando night club Pulse, the police are what give me the strength to not live in hiding. Not everyone in our community has the same hardships and one person’s oppressor can be another’s liberator. Addressing police injustices requires recognizing this fact and moving forward with a nuance which, unfortunately, those in favour of banning the police have been unwilling to show.

In January, during the annual general meeting of Toronto Pride, a group of largely white BLMTO supporters forced through a motion mandating Pride Toronto agree to BLMTO’s demands in whole, bypassing both Pride Toronto’s dispute resolution process as well as their regulations as to how to bring forward such motions. Requests to debate each of BLMTO’s demands individually were voted down by the largely white group of individuals. This prevented people of colour like me from proposing that some allowances be made. If we’re protesting violence against minorities, why not send a clearer message by banning specific offending police officers? If it’s a fear of guns, why not ask the police to march in their formal (unarmed) dress uniforms? If the goal is to encourage police reform, why not include a metric by which police can earn their way back into Pride? At the very least, if Black lives matter, then the specific police department that played a pivotal role in stopping an alleged group of confederate flag-waving racists from continuing to torment a black teen should be allowed to march normally, as they always have.

Although I was not able to speak at this meeting, other people of colour were. A black individual named Maurice Tomlinson, running as a candidate for a seat on the board of Pride Toronto, later came to the mic. Wrapped in a Jamaican flag which he wore as a cape, Tomlinson expressed how electing him would make the board more racially inclusive. During a Q&A session after, a white individual came to the mic demanding Tomlinson explain how he can be a good board member since his partner is reportedly a police officer. Tomlinson pled that the police exist to protect us—but he was booed down. In the months that followed, and conversations I’ve had, I began to understand that the anti-police sentiment had hardened into one without nuance, and that no number of black or brown voices could ever change the hearts and minds of those in that room that day. Brown and black dissenting voices, even those in favour of police reform, are not only dismissed as “privileged” but are also verbally assailed.

“[A] lot of black people in Toronto and elsewhere don’t agree with [BLMTO], but they are afraid to speak out.” writes Orville Lloyd Douglas in a recent CBC piece. Douglas’s fears are not unfounded. From what I’ve seen personally, there is a real apprehension amongst queer people of colour to publicly disagree with BLMTO. “That people are afraid to speak up and out against BLMTO because of the power they have should worry all Black people,” tweets Septembre Anderson, a Black writer who has also seen a deluge of hatred for her public criticism of BLMTO. When bringing her concerns directly to BLMTO, she reports that BLMTO “denied them all” and “were violent, dismissive and not accountable.”

And from my own experience, which echoes Anderson’s experiences, the angriest and most rabid defenders of BLMTO are often not even Black. Many non-Black individuals conflate criticism of BLMTO with anti-Black racism. For such people, supporting BLMTO serves as proof that one has “checked their privilege” or, as Anderson puts it, their favourite way of alleviating white guilt. It is perhaps the fear of losing this anti-racist branding that the most loyal and unwavering supporters of BLMTO are also often the whitest. We can’t let a movement against anti-Black racism become one where anti-oppression becomes a zero-sum game, where the safety of one marginalized group comes at the price of another. The stakes are too high.

Growing up in the closet and contemplating suicide, my conservative Muslim parents never let me attend Pride. The closest I got was catching glimpses on TV before being forced to change the channel. Of these distant glimpses, images of police marching in Pride stood out. Seeing the police, prominently and by choice, marching in Pride meant I knew they were my allies—or at least trying to be—even when those closest to me, my family, were not. It meant I could turn to them for safety when the threats I faced came from my own community and my own mental health. The loss of uniformed police marching in Pride is the loss of important visual outreach to marginalized groups too oppressed to come to Pride. It’s outreach that saves lives like mine.

To me, Pride was never just a party or a parade: It is a literal and figurative march towards greater justice. It is a journey that has seen the police transform from an institution that attacked us, sparking our parade in the first place, to one which we can turn to when our march is under threat of attack. The police as an institution have much further to go. But, as we march, we must recognize we all have much further to go on the path of justice. This is why it is important we march together: Only by marching together can we lift each other up when we fall, tell each other to pick up the pace when we are too slow, and make sure no one is left behind.

Pride is not a parade of perfection; it’s a promise amongst the imperfect to walk towards a better future.

Shawn Ahmed is a queer, Bangladeshi-Canadian Muslim activist who has been honoured by both the World Economic Forum and the Webby Awards.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/opinion/the-police-saved-my-queer-muslim-life-and-they-can-be-allies-for-others-too/feed/3A closer look at the rise in hate crimes in Canadahttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/a-closer-look-at-the-rise-in-hate-crimes-in-canada/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/a-closer-look-at-the-rise-in-hate-crimes-in-canada/#commentsWed, 14 Jun 2017 01:45:45 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=1029405Nearly half of all hate crimes reported in Canada in 2015 targeted victims based on race and religion

Imam Shazim Khan cleans up debris, on Sunday, November 15, 2015, after the only mosque in Peterborough, Ont., was deliberately set alight Saturday night. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Katsarov)

The number of hate crimes in Canada jumped five per cent in 2015 from the year before, according to a Statistic Canada report released Tuesday.

The report looked at a variety of hate-crime statistics—from crime motivations and violations to the demographics of victims and the accused.

In total, 1,362 hate-crimes were reported across the country that year. To put that in perspective, there were nearly two million criminal incidents reported to police in the same year.

Here’s a look at how some of the numbers break down:

An increase in hate-crimes based on religion and race

Two major factor explain the increase—an uptick in religiously-based and race-based hate crimes. Nearly 50 per cent of all hate crimes reported in Canada in 2015 were motivated by hatred of race or ethnicity.

The largest increase in religiously-based hate crimes was against Muslims (an increase of 61 per cent to 159 incidents) and Catholics (a 57 per cent increase to 55 incidents). Jewish people faced the highest level of religiously motivated hate crimes (178 incidents) despite seeing a 16 per cent drop over the two years.

Hate crimes targeting Blacks were still the highest of all racially or ethnically motivated crimes in 2015 (224 incidents), though that was down slightly from the year before.

Violent hate crimes also increased

Violent hate crimes increased 15 per cent from 2014 to 2015, accounting for more than two-thirds all police-reported hate crimes. The most common types of violent hate-based crimes were assaults, which jumped13 per cent from the year before, and uttering threats, up 22 per cent.

Most victims younger than 35 years old

Nearly 60 per cent of hate crime victims in 2015 were younger than 35 years old, according to the report—a similar percentage as in 2014.

When it comes to victims of hate crimes motivated by religion, however, victims were younger than the year before—people under 35 accounted for nearly 60 per cent of victims in 2015, up from around two-thirds the year before.

People accused of religious hate crimes are most likely to be under 18 years old

In more than 22 per cent of religious hate crime incidents, young people aged 12 to 17 years old were the perpetrators. Meanwhile people under the age of 24 were responsible for slightly more than half of hate crimes that targeted sexual orientation.

In its report, StatsCan suggested that the actual number of hate crimes could be considerably higher than what it found. It estimated that in two thirds of cases of hate crime, victims don’t file complaints with police. The agency also cautioned that the reporting rates can also vary by the targeted population—for example, some demographic groups might be more willing to report than others.

TORONTO — The union representing Toronto’s police officers is urging the city to pull an annual grant to Canada’s largest Pride parade after the event banned police floats.

In an open letter released by the union Wednesday, a committee representing LGBTQ officers in the force said it would be unacceptable for the city to give the roughly $260,000 grant to an event that excludes certain municipal employees.

The committee said officers would feel completely devalued and unsupported by the city if the funding continued.

The plea comes weeks after a similar call from a Toronto city councillor, who said the grant should be voted down until the city’s Pride parade returns to its “core principals of equity and inclusivity.”

In January, Pride Toronto adopted a list of demands issued by the Toronto chapter of Black Lives Matter, including banning police floats from the parade.

Members of the anti-racism group held a sit-in part way through the parade last July, stopping it from moving forward for about a half hour, until Pride organizers signed the list of demands.

Black Lives Matter said it opposed police presence in the parade because it could discourage marginalized communities from participating.

About a month after Pride Toronto’s ruling, Toronto’s police chief announced the force would not be participating in the annual event this year, citing divisions within the LGBTQ community as a key motivator.

The city still provides policing, transportation and other services for the Pride parade, which would not be affected even if the grant is revoked.

Mike McCormack, president of the Toronto Police Association, read the open letter Wednesday at city hall, where he was set to deliver it to Mayor John Tory.

“When any city employee, regardless of their job function, is disinvited from an event hosted in the city of Toronto, we feel it is simply a conflict of interest and unacceptable that the city of Toronto remain a sponsor,” he read.

“We can think of no example in Canada where either a public or private employer has been a lead sponsor for an event their employees were asked not to participate in.”

The issue of police participation in Pride parades has also emerged in other Canadian cities in recent months.

The Vancouver Pride Society has asked officers in that city to show up in fewer numbers and without their uniforms at the request of the local chapter of Black Lives Matter.

Halifax police have also announced they would pull out of the city’s Pride parade this year in light of the “national debate” about law enforcement participation in such events.

TORONTO – Amid mounting controversy over police participation in pride events across the country, a Toronto city councillor is calling for a municipal donation to Canada’s largest Pride parade to be cut after the event banned police floats from future festivities.

Coun. John Campbell said about half a dozen councillors so far agree that Pride Toronto’s annual grant request, expected in April, should be voted down until the city’s Pride parade returns to its “core principals of equity and inclusivity.”

“It doesn’t sit right with me and with other councillors that we issue this grant in view of the position that they’ve taken with respect to the police force,” he said Tuesday. “We need a certain level of equity and inclusivity attached to the issuance of grants for organizations.”

In an unexpected move at its annual general meeting in January, Pride Toronto adopted a list of demands issued by the Toronto chapter of Black Lives Matter, including banning police floats from the parade.

Members of the anti-racism group held a sit-in part way through the city’s annual Pride parade last July, stopping it from moving forward for about a half hour, until Pride organizers signed the list of demands. Black Lives Matter said it opposed police presence in the parade because it could discourage marginalized communities from participating.

“Black Lives Matter bullied Pride into making a decision that I don’t think was in the best interests of the city,” Campbell said.

Janaya Khan, co-founder of the group’s Toronto chapter, said the councillor did not understand race relations.

“What is missing is a real understanding of what it means to be a racialized person in this city, and the fear that exists in your body when you are around a police officer,” Khan said. “The institution of policing discriminates people based on race. We actually wouldn’t need to exist if city councillors were doing their job.”

The group’s goal, Khan said, is to create a broader discourse about public safety while creating a safe space for the black community involved in the parade.

Still, Pride’s decision to comply with Black Lives Matter’s demands was panned by some as a significant setback for police and LGBTQ relations.

In February, Toronto’s police chief announced that his force would not be participating in the annual event this year. Chief Mark Saunders pointed to divisions within the LGBTQ community as the primary reason for his decision.

Campbell said his objective is to get pride organizers and police talking again and working towards a more positive relationship.

In addition to the annual grant, worth about $260,000, the city foots the bill for about $750,000 worth of services related to the event, including policing, paramedics, transportation and waste collection. Those funds won’t be affected, Campbell said.

Pride Toronto executive director Olivia Nuamah said she can “barely speculate” on the impact of potentially losing the grant from the city.

“We believe in our festival and our festival will go on no matter what,” she said.

Nuamah said the organization has worked hard to address the concerns of its membership.

“Our membership’s relationship with the police was spelled out as an issue,” she said. “We feel positive that we will find the right solution to the issues that have been brought up.”

Nuamah, who has been in her position for about six weeks, said her understanding is the police withdrew from the festivities in order to “minimize negativity” and address community concerns. She said police will continue to provide public safety throughout the festival.

Toronto’s Pride parade and festival, the largest in North America, is not the only LGBTQ event in Canada to be engulfed in controversy in recent months.

In Vancouver, where police have marched in that city’s pride parade since 2002, officers have been asked to show up in fewer numbers and leave their uniforms at home.

The Vancouver Pride Society made the request last month after the local chapter of Black Lives Matter asked the Vancouver Police Department to voluntarily withdraw from the march as “a show of solidarity and understanding'” because the presence of uniformed officers makes some minority groups feel unsafe.

Meanwhile, Halifax Regional Police said in early February that after considering the “national debate” about police involvement in such events, it would pull out of this year’s Halifax Pride parade

A man casts a shadow near a message written in chalk during a vigil for Abdirahman Abdi, a Somali immigrant to Canada who died after being hospitalized in critical condition following his arrest by Canadian police, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, July 26, 2016. (Chris Wattie/Reuters)

OTTAWA – Ottawa’s police chief called for patience and respect Monday after one of his officers was charged in the death of a Somali-Canadian man during a confrontation with two constables outside his home last summer.

Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit said that Const. Daniel Montsion has been charged with manslaughter, aggravated assault and assault with a weapon in the death of Abdirahman Abdi in July 2016.

Montsion was one of two officers involved in an altercation in Ottawa with Abdi, a 37-year-old man who lost vital signs during the confrontation before being pronounced dead in hospital the following afternoon.

The SIU – an oversight body that investigates deaths, serious injuries and sexual assaults involving police in the province – said its investigators determined there was enough evidence to lay charges, but no details about what they uncovered were released.

“The SIU investigation determined that in the morning of Sunday, July 24, 2016 . . . there was an interaction between officers and Mr. Abdi . . . and he went into medical distress,” the unit said in a statement.

“Mr. Abdi was transported to Ottawa Civic Hospital where he died the next day.”

In response to the charges, Ottawa Police Chief Charles Bordeleau acknowledged Abdi’s death was “very difficult” for his family and caused a rift in the community and he asked that the courts be allowed to do their job.

“The officer involved, like any member of the community going through a similar process, deserves to be treated fairly,” Bordeleau said in a statement.

“Our members are professional and they care about this community.”

Lawrence Greenspon, the lawyer for Abdi’s family, said he is confident justice will be served in the case, although convictions of police officers charged with serious crimes in Ontario have been rare.

“I’m confident that the criminal justice process will be proceeded through with everybody doing their proper jobs,” Greenspon said at a hastily arranged news conference at his downtown Ottawa office.

“In this case, there is a large body of evidence and the Crown is intent on working with that body of evidence.”

The confrontation with Abdi took place shortly after police were called to a coffee shop in response to reports of a man causing a disturbance.

Police caught up to Abdi a few blocks away outside his apartment building, where cellphone videos showed the man lying on his stomach, handcuffed, while two constables held him down.

Witnesses at the time reported that a man had groped customers at the coffee shop, although the SIU report into its investigation of what transpired leading up to Abdi’s confrontation with the officers is not being released. That report is now in the hands of Ontario Attorney General Yasir Naqvi.

There have been no indications of whether a second officer who was at the scene with Montsion will face any charges, said Greenspon.

Abdi’s death sparked multiple protests in Ottawa, as well as in Toronto and Montreal.

OTTAWA – RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson referenced the Mounties’ decision to give rifles to more frontline officers as he expressed fears Monday about the increasing militarization of Canadian police forces.

Appearing before the Senate national security committee, Paulson said he wants his officers to have the best equipment possible to uphold the law as well as protect the public and themselves.

But he said he is “afraid of the trend in policing for escalating military-style tools being used by law enforcement to conduct police operations.”

The result is a focus on enforcement and an increased reliance on force, Paulson said, “rather than the problem-solving, community-oriented, prevention approach that is better suited to the Canadian context.”

The commissioner admitted the Mounties have no shortage of heavy weaponry, including armoured vehicles, drones and machine-guns.

More frontline officers are also being armed with carbine rifles, which was one of a number of recommendations that came out after the shooting deaths of three Mounties in Moncton, N.B., in 2014.

But Paulson said the decision to distribute the carbines, which he described as “very electric,” must be matched with greater perception among frontline officers on the issues surrounding use of force.

“Are we going to be going (after) shoplifters with a carbine?” he asked. “Our policies have been refined to sort of think that through.”

Police forces need to spend more time thinking about how they present themselves to and engage with the public, Paulson added, right down to the choice of uniform.

The greatest risk is creating an “us-versus-them” mentality among police officers, which creates distance from and a potentially adversarial attitude toward the communities they are supposed to serve.

“We need to be thoughtful, consultative and deliberate in these areas,” he said.

The Senate committee also heard that the Mounties are struggling with a shortage of hundreds of personnel, with the average detachment understaffed by around five per cent.

Part of the problem is that many officers end up leaving for better-paid jobs with other police forces, Paulson said.

A request to increase officers’ salaries, which the committee heard are among the lowest in the country, is currently being considered by the federal government.

The RCMP is also preparing to make a case to the government for more resources to help with recruiting, the commissioner said, though he wouldn’t say when such a request would be made.

]]>TORONTO – A lawyer charged with fraud and money laundering related to dealings he had with top executives of a police union is appealing his suspension.

In a notice to the Law Society appeal panel, Andrew McKay asks that findings made in November against him be set aside.

“The hearing panel erred in concluding that there was strong evidence of the lawyer’s involvement and active participation in a fraudulent scheme based only on untested hearsay allegations,” McKay says in the notice. “The appellant has no discipline history and enjoys a reputation for honesty and integrity.”

The panel suspended McKay’s licence last month pending outcome of the criminal proceedings against him, a process that could take years.

Following a 19-month investigation, the RCMP charged McKay and four others in June with fraud over $5,000 and laundering the proceeds of crime. While the criminal process unfolds, the courts ordered the Law Society of Upper Canada to put its disciplinary proceedings against him on hold.

McKay frequently represented police officers in criminal and discipline matters, including those with the Ontario Provincial Police. Three of his co-accused were former top executives with their union, and the fourth owned a travel business.

The allegations against them essentially are that they set up a travel agency and one of the police association brass ordered employees and outside lawyers to use its services — worth about $400,000 a year.

The other allegation turns on a consulting company they set up in 2014 — PIN Consulting Group — which was to be paid $5,000 a month by the police association for advice on travel, investment and real estate although it apparently provided no services. McKay, who the panel said had no professional experience or expertise in the investments, travel or consulting business, was its only employee.

“The alleged offences, if proven, would raise serious questions about the lawyer’s integrity and honesty,” the panel said in its decision. “There was a significant risk of harm to the public confidence in the administration of justice and in the legal profession if the lawyer was not suspended.”

While the panel found his professional record had been unblemished and acknowledged the hardships of a suspension, it said it had no choice but to protect the public interest.

McKay, who is in his mid-50s, was an officer with the Toronto police and became a detective constable before leaving for law school in 1987.

In his notice of appeal, he argues the suspension was unreasonable and that his family relies on his income from practising law.

He also argues that the panel made “adverse findings” against him because he didn’t testify at the hearing or make any apologies. He also takes issue with the finding that PIN “seems to have been created for the express purpose of diverting funds” from the Ontario Provincial Police Association.

McKay argues other “respected” lawyers would be able to supervise his practise to minimize any risk he might pose and maintain public confidence in the system.

]]>Five underrated reasons for Trump’s winhttp://www.macleans.ca/facebook-instant-articles/5-underrated-reasons-for-trumps-win/
Thu, 10 Nov 2016 22:36:36 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=949353After Trump’s win, a look at some news stories that now appear to have been bigger than they seemed at the time

After Donald Trump’s upset victory over Hillary Clinton, there have been many articles and TV news reports discussing all the reasons why it happened: economic hardship, unauthorized immigration, racial resentment, Obamacare, and of course, the “damn emails.” But in a close election, there are always a lot of less-discussed stories that may have made some difference—especially among people who aren’t always on the radar of journalists.

Here are five stories that may have been more important to the election outcome than the U.S. press realized at the time.

1. Birth control. There were two recent cases, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby and Zubik v. Burwell, where the Obama administration went to the Supreme Court over its mandate that employers provide birth control as part of their health care packages. The administration’s position was that only religious institutions were completely exempt from the mandate. These cases—particularly Zubik, where the litigants were nuns—created a huge stir among conservative Christians, and many arguments that religious liberty was under threat. The Obama administration narrowly lost the first case, and would have lost the second case had Antonin Scalia been alive. This story did a lot to drive religious conservatives to support Trump in spite of their doubts about his character: he had promised to appoint judges with a broad view of religious conscience exemptions, while they knew for sure that Hillary Clinton wouldn’t.

2. Shooting of police officers. In July of this year, a sniper killed five police officers at a rally in Dallas. The killer, the chief of police said, “said he was upset about the recent police shootings. The suspect said he was upset at white people. The suspect stated he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.” Both candidates, of course, denounced the killing, but Hillary Clinton’s statement also mentioned the need to root out “systemic racism” in police departments, while Trump took a more Nixonian, unambiguously pro-cop stand and kept taking it for the rest of the campaign. That made him and the Republicans in general able to benefit from a backlash against Black Lives Matter.

5. Rising crime. The high crime rates of the 1970s and 1980s were a key part of U.S. politics, forcing Democrats like Bill Clinton to run to the right on issues like the death penalty and incarceration. Because crime fell in the 1990s, and continued to be historically low even during the recession, many Democrats assumed that the issue no longer worked for Republicans, and that it was time to talk more about criminal-justice reform. But violent crime rates have risen in the last couple of years, something that Donald Trump and his speechwriters made the focus of his speech at the Republican National Convention. Many fact checkers argued that this was an exaggerated problem because the crime rates were still low by historical standards. But it turns out that “things are better than they were in the ’70s and ’80s” is not a persuasive argument.

]]>Quebec reporters were under surveillance by provincial policehttp://www.macleans.ca/news/quebec-reporters-were-under-surveillance-by-provincial-police/
Wed, 02 Nov 2016 23:12:32 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=945757'This shakes everything we take for granted in a democracy when you're a reporter,' said one of the reporters. 'I am extremely disturbed by this."

MONTREAL — The controversy surrounding the surveillance of reporters in Quebec intensified Wednesday as provincial police admitted they monitored the cellphones of several prominent journalists three years ago.

“Warrants had been obtained to be able to (log) outgoing and incoming calls of at least six members of the media,” Capt. Guy Lapointe said in an interview.

He said police kept tabs on the phones as part of an investigation into an alleged leak of confidential wiretap information in 2013.

News of the surveillance came a few days after it emerged Montreal police obtained court-authorized warrants this year to monitor the iPhone of La Presse columnist Patrick Lagace because they believed the target of one of their internal investigations was feeding him information.

Lapointe said Martin Prud’homme, who became provincial police director in 2014, wanted to know whether the force had engaged in any similar activity in recent years.

Prud’homme is asking for an independent investigation into the situation.

“To ensure it was done according to the laws, it was by the book and the rights of everyone had been respected,” Lapointe said, explaining the reason for Prud’homme’s request.

While the warrants obtained by the provincial force are sealed and police didn’t name the journalists, the shocked reporters in question did come forward.

Some said police were attempting to figure out the source of a leak concerning a criminal investigation into a prominent labour leader.

Radio-Canada identified three of the six as their employees, while La Presse and Le Journal de Montreal said they each had one on the list. The employer of the sixth was not revealed.

Marie-Maude Denis, one of the six, said a source told her police obtained warrants that allowed them to compile a list of numbers from incoming and outgoing calls, although it is believed they did not listen to the content of the actual conversations.

“I’ve been receiving a lot of calls from people I spoke to and who are wondering if they were listened to,” Denis, an investigative reporter at Radio-Canada, told the CBC’s French-language network.

“It’s important to mention the conversations weren’t listened to. Probably, they were looking for police officers who were possibly feeding us and they weren’t interested in other people.

“But this shakes everything we take for granted in a democracy when you’re a reporter. I am extremely disturbed by this.”

Meanwhile, La Presse has sent a lawyer’s letter to the Montreal police department, warning it against the use of data collected from Lagace’s phone.

The newspaper’s lawyer will be in court Friday to argue the information should be sealed.

“The absence of precautions taken during the collection of data from Mr. Lagace’s cellphone to protect confidential sources is a scandal and an unprecedented attack on the freedom of the press,” Sebastien Pierre-Roy wrote.

Investigators themselves acknowledged the information wasn’t relevant, but the police still possess it and admit it could lead to Lagace’s sources being revealed.

“This data has never belonged to the SPVM (Montreal police), and still does not belong to them,” Pierre-Roy wrote.

]]>Officer pleads guilty over remarks following death of Indigenous artisthttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/officer-pleads-guilty-over-remarks-following-death-of-indigenous-artist/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/officer-pleads-guilty-over-remarks-following-death-of-indigenous-artist/#commentsTue, 01 Nov 2016 20:28:54 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=944725Sgt. Chris Hrnchiar had posted Facebook comments after the death of Annie Pootoogook

Ottawa Police Sgt. Chris Hrnchiar leaves his misconduct hearing for charges under the Police Services Act for racist comments posted to social media after Annie Pootoogook’s death, at the Ottawa Police station on Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2016 in Ottawa. (Justin Tang/CP)

OTTAWA – An Ottawa police officer apologized to his family, the force and the Inuit community on Tuesday after pleading guilty to two Police Services Act charges in connection with online remarks he made about the death of indigenous artist Annie Pootoogook.

Sgt. Chris Hrnchiar — a 30-year veteran who was working as a forensic investigator at the time of the remarks — was charged with two counts of discreditable conduct under the act.

In September, Hrnchiar posted Facebook comments — described during Tuesday’s hearing as “racist” — suggesting Pootoogook’s death ought not to be linked to the phenomenon of missing and murdered indigenous women across Canada.

Pootoogook’s body was found in the Rideau River on Sept. 19 — a death that police did not originally treat as suspicious.

“This has nothing to do with missing or murdered aboriginal women,” Hrnchiar posted. “It’s not a murder case … could be a suicide, accidental, she got drunk and fell in the river and drowned, who knows?”

Hrnchiar, wearing a dark suit, stood and expressed his regret to a room packed with his family, friends and members of the media at the Ottawa police station.

“I’m truly sorry for my actions,” he said.

Tuesday’s proceedings were heard by retired York Region police deputy chief Terence Kelly, who is expected to deliver a sentence on Dec. 7.

Hrnchiar’s defence lawyers and Ottawa police jointly recommended a penalty of a three-month demotion to the rank of first-class constable and cultural sensitivity training.

The situation has been very difficult for Hrnchiar, said Ottawa Police Association president Matt Skof.

“He’s realized, all the way throughout, how troubling and damaging the comments have been,” Skof said following the hearing. “Chris has wanted to take responsibility for this. This has had a great impact on himself, his family and his colleagues and he’s recognized that.”

An agreed statement of facts presented Tuesday said Hrnchiar appreciates the embarrassment the comments caused the Ottawa police and that he displayed remorse for his actions.

It also noted he has engaged with the force’s diversity and race relations team to assist with a dialogue with members of the Inuit community.

“It’s frustrating, because obviously he wanted to make this known from the beginning,” Skof said. “As we have a Police Service Act process, he understands the limitations and legalities around making comments prior to today … he made a point of saying it today.”

Ottawa police Chief Charles Bordeleau previously called the comments inappropriate, saying they had racial undertones and didn’t reflect the values of the service.

]]>CALGARY – A unit that reviews police actions in Alberta is alleging that officers broke a man’s ribs and caused his lung to collapse and lied about him resisting arrest.

Susan Hughson of the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team announced Wednesday that three Calgary constables are facing criminal charges that include assault causing bodily harm.

Clayton Prince, 34, was chased by police after he ran away from a traffic stop on July 30. He was charged with resisting arrest and possession of marijuana.

ASIRT began investigating a month later when video from a police dashboard camera contradicted officer accounts of the arrest.

“After Mr. Prince had surrendered to police and was lying prone on the ground on his stomach, with his hands behind his head, it is alleged that the named officers committed an assault upon Mr. Prince, both before and after he was handcuffed,” Hughson said at a news conference.

Hughson said the assault continued after Prince, handcuffed by that time, was put in the back of a police vehicle, where an officer dug the point of a key into the man’s neck “resulting in an injury that became infected and required additional treatment.”

The charges against Prince, who agreed to have his name released by ASIRT, were stayed in September.

Hughson pointed out that Prince had not reported the assault nor made any complaint at the time her agency became involved. He had photographed his injuries, however, and, when asked, provided a statement to ASIRT that she called detailed and compelling.

Othen and Humphrey also face charges of public mischief for allegedly making false statements.

Othen faces an additional charge of assault with a weapon — the key.

A fourth officer present that night was not charged and is to act as a witness. Hughson said that doesn’t preclude his facing police disciplinary proceedings.

Hughson, ASIRT’s executive director, said she feels the public mischief charges are the most serious.

“When you have an officer alleging that somebody has committed an offence, and having someone charged, this is in my opinion one of the more serious cases ASIRT has dealt with.”

She also urged people to remember that it was good police work that uncovered inconsistencies about the arrest.

“These alleged offences only came to light as a result of the diligence of members of (the Calgary Police Service) who, in the course of a review of the incident, came upon video evidence that potentially gave rise to significant and disturbing conduct, as well as inconsistencies with the earlier provided information, and reported it to their supervisors.”

All three officers have been brought before a justice of the peace and were released on their own recognizance with conditions.

]]>CALGARY — The Crown has decided that a Calgary officer who fatally shot an addict holding a syringe in a hotel room will not be charged with a criminal offence.

The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team says in a release that it initially recommended the officer be charged in the March 2015 death of Anthony Heffernan.

But the police watchdog unit says the Crown’s office requested an expert opinion on use of force, and it showed the shooting could be justified.

It says the Crown determined there was no reasonable likelihood of conviction in the case and no charges will be laid.

Heffernan, who was 27, was shot four times — twice in the head — in his room at a Super 8 hotel near the city’s airport.

His family has said the recovering drug addict wasn’t posing a threat to anyone and officers didn’t need to go into his room.

“He was not causing a disturbance,” says a post on the website Truth and Justice for Anthony.

“So why on a wellness check did five armed police officers break down his door, Taser and then shoot him when he was unarmed?”

ASIRT says hotel staff had called police when Heffernan failed to check out of his room and, when officers arrived, they found him holding a syringe in one hand and flicking a lighter with the other.

He was unresponsive and appeared to be in a drug-induced state.

“All of the witness officers stated concerns about the possibility that the syringe might be contaminated and that they might get stabbed or stuck by it,” ASIRT says in the release.

“Although the officers commanded him to drop the syringe, he remained unresponsive, non-communicative, and seemingly unaware.”

One police officer fired a Taser at Heffernan but it didn’t work. As a second officer was preparing to hit Heffernan again with a Taser, another officer fired his gun six times.

“The subject officer made a quick decision in a volatile and rapidly unfolding situation to use his service firearm in order to defend against Mr. Heffernan,” says a statement from the Alberta Crown Prosecution Service.

“The evidence would be that he did so as a defensive action against an individual who was armed with a syringe, and who had been either unwilling or unable to comply with police directions. In all of these circumstances, it could not be disproven that the subject officer acted upon a reasonable belief that he and the other officers were at risk of serious or grievous bodily harm, and that his use of force was necessary.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/calgary-officer-who-fatally-shot-addict-wont-be-charged/feed/1To serve and forecheckhttp://www.macleans.ca/society/to-serve-and-forecheck/
Mon, 25 Apr 2016 16:08:00 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=862545Calgary’s Louise Warren has learned that what works on the ice works on the streets

Louise Warren is a forward on the Calgary Inferno. It’s an unpaid gig—with the exception of a few team-related expenses that are covered—and so like most pros in the Canadian Women’s Hockey League, Warren needs a full-time job to support herself. While a nine-to-five job would make the most sense, leaving weekends and evenings open for practices and games, Warren chose policing—one of the few jobs that’s more intense and dangerous than her role on the ice. Last October, Warren worked a 12-hour overnight shift before lacing up for the Inferno’s opening weekend match-up against Boston, scheduled at the ridiculous hour of 8 a.m. She scored one goal and assisted two others while her workmates were sound asleep. “She puts on her stuff,” says Inferno head coach Scott Reid, “and it’s like a full 360-degree mindset change: ‘My job’s done, I’m here to play hockey, I’m here to get better and help the team get better.’ ”

A rookie with the Calgary Police Service, Warren just wrapped up her second season with the Inferno and is making a name for herself both on and off the ice as someone who cares—about her community, her job and women’s hockey. “The fact that she’s juggling both,” says Reid, “shows how much she cares. She’s out there serving day in and day out. The girls on the team look up to her.” It’s the way she’s always been, says her father, George Warren. “She’s empathetic and she’s got a strong work ethic. She cares about how the team does and if it doesn’t do well she takes that onus on herself.” George always told Louise she’d make a good police officer. He should know: he’s been one for 26 years.

Warren learned to play hockey on an outdoor ice rink in Pembroke, Ont. She signed up for the boys’ rec league at seven years old—the only option available at the time. It wasn’t long before she was named captain of her team. In Grade 9, she moved to high-level women’s hockey with the Lady Senators in Ottawa. It was a good fit for Warren, but a two-hour drive to practice, which ran twice a week from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. “I’d get really tired on the drives home,” says George. “I’d have to pull over, get fresh air, throw stones, go for a little walk. I’m thinking, ‘I’m trying to do what’s best for her, but I’m not going to if I kill her in a car accident.’ ”

Her parents considered billeting Warren with a family in Ottawa, but ultimately George and Nancy, Louise’s mom, sent their daughter to a U.S. prep school, Brewster Academy, in Wolfeboro, N.H.—which offered her a full scholarship. “My grades were suffering because I was more hockey-focused than anything,” says Warren, “and the travelling was taking a toll. At Brewster I didn’t have to worry about that. They incorporate sports right into the school day.” In Grade 10, Warren left Pembroke and, apart from a couple of summers, she’s never moved back home. “Going away at 15 was tougher on us than it was on her,” says George.

Warren flourished at Brewster and by her junior year had scholarship offers from Cornell, Sarah Lawrence and Boston University. After growing up in Pembroke and living in the even smaller town of Wolfeboro, she chose Boston University, because the campus is in the heart of the city. “She was one of those focused kids right from the beginning,” says Brian Durocher, head coach of the BU Terriers women’s hockey team for the last 12 years. “As a player, she’s got great straight-line speed, she’s a good wall player and a super teammate. She would do a lot of the dirty, grubby things that are part of the game: blocking shots, battles on the wall and battles in front of the net.”

In her four years at BU, Warren never missed a game and played in two NCAA Frozen Four Championships. And, says Durocher, “she saved her best for last.” In 2013-14, Warren’s final season, she was voted captain by her teammates. Many of the Terriers’ big-name players had graduated, and another star, Marie-Philip Poulin, was with Team Canada prepping for the 2014 Olympics. “People weren’t expecting us to do much,” says Warren. “That motivated me and the rest of the seniors to prove everyone wrong. We had a chip on our shoulder.” She went to Durocher and told him she knew people were considering it a rebuilding year, but she wanted him to coach to win. “Louise willed the team to success that year,” says Durocher. “She wasn’t really seen as a prolific goal scorer, but she led by example, and had 27 goals. Only five kids in NCAA hockey were above 25 goals that year and she was one of them. She was going to find a way and get it done.”

The Terriers won the divisional title for the third straight year and the team named Warren MVP. “I cared so much about every single girl on that team,” she says. “It didn’t matter if they were on the first line or they were the third backup goalie. As the captain I wanted to keep everyone on the same page—all 25 girls in the dressing room. You spend so much time with them, live with them, socialize with them, play with them—and that year we rarely had any team drama.”

When Warren graduated with a degree in health sciences she had some tough decisions to make. Players who are going into the CWHL have a say in what city they want to go to. They put three cities on a list, though they still have to go through a draft. (They typically wind up on their first choice.) An avid snowboarder, Warren picked Calgary first because of its proximity to the mountains. But she also needed a job. “I thought she’d enjoy policing,” says George. “She’s got great people skills, can comfortably speak to coaches, peers and younger people. She’s always had common sense—and could never sit still very long.” In her youth, Warren had resisted the family business, but as an adult it seemed like a solid choice. She submitted an application to the Calgary Police Service.

Warren’s parents gave her their old car and George drove her out West, staying in cheap motels along the way. It reminded him of those early years of travelling for hockey. Once they arrived, George was on a plane the next morning. “I was leaving her again,” he says. “We drove to New Hampshire and left her, and then we drove her to Boston and left her, and then I drove her to Calgary and left her.” Warren remembers the moment well: “He was walking into the airport and I’m thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve been to Calgary all of twice and now I’m here to pursue a career, maybe for a lifetime.’ ”

Hockey helped ease the transition. “You adopt this team as your family,” she says of her 2014-15 rookie year with the Inferno. “You go from playing on a team for four years in university and loving every second, to ‘I’m on this team now, these are my girls, these are my friends, these are my family.’ You want to produce and play your best and bring the team to where everyone wants to go.” In the off-season she did six months of police training. Last fall she became a full-time patrol officer responding mostly to emergencies from her cruiser. Due to shift work, she could no longer make every game—and it meant some adjustments on the ice. Reid calls her a depth player, an unsung hero who contributed to the franchise winning its first Clarkson Cup last month. “I’ve been put into that fourth-line position,” says Warren, “which can mean helping out the team mentally, and keeping everyone supported on the bench. And then I’ll be thrown into a second-line position, where you have to adapt to a more dominant role.”

It’s not unlike policing, which is different every day. “It’s so exciting,” says Warren. “You don’t know what you’re going to get. Will one call take up a whole day or are you going to do 30 calls? What’s the city of Calgary going to bring me today?” Her superior, Sgt. Dave Ellement, says Warren is thriving at work and he’s not surprised—in his experience, hockey players make good police officers. “She’s very coachable,” says Ellement. “She knows she’s part of a team. And this job is a grind, just like hockey. The calls never stop, people always need help.”

As for the burnout and fatigue from juggling both? “It hasn’t happened yet,” says Warren. “I made it through a whole season during my first few months on the job. In my mind that’s going to be the hardest time, new on the street and second year on a high-profile team. Fatigue just hasn’t been an issue.” Case closed.

]]>The police vs. social mediahttp://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/the-police-vs-social-media/
Sat, 16 Apr 2016 10:36:33 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=859911Why the logic of policing and the logic of social media are in conflict

In a very real sense, this a story of two hockey riots. The Vancouver Canucks went to the final game of the Stanley Cup finals in 1994 and 2011. They lost each time, and each time their fans rioted. There was considerable variation in scale between the eruptions, but the main distinction was that 1994 was an essentially familiar episode in Canada’s rich history of off-ice hockey violence, while 2011, a Vancouver Police Department report noted, was “North America’s first social media sports riot.”

Written for fellow scholars and dense with academic terminology, this evaluation by a Brandon University sociologist of how the social media revolution has affected policing in Canada is surprisingly populist in its framing. In 1994, it notes, the VPD used court orders to acquire TV footage of rioters, video that police used to control the narrative of the event (after, that is, police discarded the parts that showed police violence). In 2011, the nascent VPD social media department was paralyzed—Const. Anne Longley, virtually the whole of that department, recalled “watching cars being torched and people destroying the buildings and streets downtown, [wondering], ‘What do I say on social media now? Do I use a hashtag? Which one? Should I use the word riot?’ ”

Meanwhile, the user-controlled site “Vancouver Riot Pics: Post Your Photos” was online within 10 minutes of the riot’s start. Many observers worried that the rioters were organizing themselves by social media, but the opposite response troubled authorities. Online vigilantism—naming and shaming, even of individuals too young to be lawfully named—was on the march. An alarmed VPD found itself not only with an out-of-control riot, but a public response equally outside its grasp. Large police forces across Canada took notice and began to scale up their immersion in the new media; the next month, Toronto Police Services launched its “social media strategy.”

Not that the strategy did the TPS any good two years later, when Const. James Forcillo shot and killed Sammy Yatim on a streetcar. Bystander video of the shooting went up on YouTube shortly after; three days later, the TPS posted its own YouTube video, an anodyne plea to wait for the results of the investigation. Pro-police response was drowned out by hostile reaction. Social media, argues Schneider, “provided the dominant frame of how [Yatim’s] death was interpreted in the absence of police accounts.” The logic of policing (hierarchical and tight-lipped) and the logic of social media (democratic and wide-open) are in conflict in fundamental ways, Schneider points out, and there is little doubt that police acceptance of body cameras—their own video supply—would be far less were it not for social media.

]]>TORONTO — Ontario has released its final regulations to ban police from randomly stopping people to collect personal information, a practice known as carding or street checks.

The regulations, which were first posted last October for public comment, set out what the government calls “clear and consistent rules” for voluntary police-public interactions.

Race is prohibited from being any part of a police officer’s reason for attempting to collect someone’s identifying information.

Starting Jan. 1, 2017, police must tell people they have a right not to talk with them, and refusing to co-operate or walking away cannot then be used as reasons to compel information.

However, police can gather personal information during routine traffic stops, when someone is being arrested or detained, or when a search warrant is executed.

The Liberal government said it wanted to ban arbitrary stops after hearing from too many people of colour and aboriginal men and women, who said the Human Rights Code was being ignored by police who stopped them for no apparent reason.

Under the new regulations, police must offer a written record of any interactions with the public, including their name and badge number, along with information on how to contact the Independent Police Review Director.

All identifying information that is collected by officers will have to be submitted within 30 days for review by the local chief of police. At least once a year, the chiefs will have to conduct a detailed review of a random sample of entries in their database to verify it was collected in compliance with the regulation.

Chiefs must also issue an annual public report on the number of attempted collections of personal information, the sex, age and race of the individuals stopped, and the neighbourhoods where the information was collected.

The government is also promising a roundtable of experts to advise the Ontario Police College on the development of new training for officers on racism, bias awareness and discrimination. It said all officers will be trained by Jan. 1.

]]>FREDERICTON — At least 16 New Brunswick police officers have been suspended or fired in the past year, and a criminology professor says it is eroding public confidence in police forces.

“It is going to take time to see how deep that erosion is but it certainly raises doubts in the public’s minds how much trust and faith we can put in our frontline officers,” said Michael Boudreau, who teaches at St. Thomas University in Fredericton.

“Some people continue to support the police because they know that for the most part officers are doing their jobs and…are not running afoul of the law. For others, these incidents reinforce their lack of confidence and strident criticisms of police.”

The municipal police force in Fredericton has had about a half-dozen officers suspended in the past year, including two fired in the last month following arbitration.

Fredericton Police Chief Leanne Fitch issued a statement last week saying these are “troubling times” for her force.

“It is important to remember that there are still many hard working officers on our force and we are so proud of their immense dedication and professionalism,” she wrote.

Other forces have been in the spotlight as well. Two officers in Bathurst have been charged with manslaughter after a man was shot to death inside his car.

As well, Roger Brown, commanding officer of the New Brunswick RCMP, announced last month that four of 20 officers in the Woodstock detachment had been suspended — all accused of discreditable conduct.

One has since retired and the suspension against another has been lifted. The others, who Brown is seeking to have suspended without pay, face a code of conduct review and a criminal investigation.

In total, eight of the 732 RCMP officers in the province are currently suspended, including two who are suspended without pay as a result of charges of forgery and impaired driving.

During a news conference in December, Brown called the suspensions of RCMP and municipal officers “embarrassing,” but said there’s only so much that chiefs can do.

“I’m a commanding officer but I’m not a babysitter. I’m not with them 24 hours a day,” he said.

“That’s why we have an RCMP Act that holds them to a higher standard. Police officers must be held to a higher standard in the community.”

Steve Roberge, executive director of the New Brunswick Police Commission, said he believes the “fairly significant volume” of suspensions is just a coincidence.

“This past year there seems to be a preponderance of disciplinary problems that involve police officers’ criminality. Everything from driving while impaired to assaults of spouses, theft and uttering threats and assaults,” he said.

“On any given day we have 20 to 25 ongoing complaints, but not all of them involving criminality.”

The commission is responsible for investigating complaints involving the nine municipal police forces in the province and their 456 officers.

It is asking the provincial government for 30 changes to the New Brunswick Police Act, including one that could allow chiefs to suspend officers without pay.

But Bob Davidson, executive director of the New Brunswick Police Association, accuses the commission of trying to destroy the balance within the Police Act.

“Over the years of police work some of our people run into marital problems or drinking problems,” he said. “They’re human, and you need to deal with it in a human way, not just fire, fire.”

Roberge said the commission, Department of Public Safety and New Brunswick Community College hope to develop training and retraining courses for police officers dealing with ethics and values.

“It seems odd that we’re having to do this but we’re in a position right now where we’re starting to see that it needs to be done,” Roberge said.

Paul McKenna, a Nova Scotia consultant who works with police forces, said such courses would just be “window dressing” that wouldn’t transform anyone’s behaviour.

Instead, he said the process of trying to weed out people who could be problematic should begin at the point of recruitment.

“There are psychological profiles that landmark on honesty, integrity, and authenticity,” he said.

The municipal police force in Saint John — the largest in the province with 140 members — had no officers suspended or fired in the past year.

However, the force did come under scrutiny during the trial of Dennis Oland in the murder of his father, businessman Richard Oland.

Evidence during the trial suggested a number of problems with the investigation, prompting the Saint John Board of Police Commissioners to ask the provincial police commission to conduct an inquiry.

The commission is also investigating an allegation that when Saint John deputy chief Glen McCloskey was an inspector, he asked an officer not to tell the Oland trial that he had been in the crime scene.

]]>BALTIMORE – Months before Freddie Gray died of the broken neck he suffered during what Baltimore’s top prosecutor called an illegal arrest, the city’s mayor and police commissioner said the department needed reform and asked the Justice Department for help reviewing officer misconduct.

Now that Gray is buried, six officers are charged in his death and an uneasy calm has returned to the streets, critics are wondering whether city leaders are capable of implementing the change the city needs without the direct, intensive oversight that comes with a full-fledged civil rights investigation resulting in a federal consent decree.

Democratic Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has already pushed back against this possibility, saying it would deprive Baltimore’s leaders from having a say in fighting crime in one of the nation’s most violent major cities, with more than 200 homicides a year.

“Nobody wants the Department of Justice to come and take over our city,” she said last week.

Baltimore’s leaders should welcome federal oversight, because it’s doubtful any police department can fix itself from within, said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the University of California-Irvine School of Law.

Consent decrees have been mostly effective since Congress responded to the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles by granting the Justice Department the power in 1994 to sue police departments for civil rights violations. Los Angeles went through it, and proved that it works, said Chemerinsky, who has studied reform efforts there.

“I think that there is less likelihood of excessive force today, less racist policing today in Los Angeles, than prior to the consent decree,” he said.

The Justice Department has negotiated settlements with 21 other police departments since then; Seattle and New Orleans are currently under consent decrees, and Cleveland’s police department is negotiating one.

Justice officials are also negotiating with the department in Ferguson, Missouri, where an officer’s shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown sparked a national debate about use of force by police against blacks. The federal civil rights investigation in Ferguson found patterns of racial bias and discriminatory law enforcement tactics.

A consent decree is a form of negotiated settlement with the Justice Department that averts a civil-rights lawsuit. Police departments agree to implement a series of reforms under the watch of an independent monitor.

The Justice Department already announced a separate federal probe of Gray’s death. And a broad civil rights investigation would not begin unless federal authorities conclude the ongoing voluntary review is insufficient.

Federal consent decrees also create new challenges. It can take more than a decade for police departments to satisfy their requirements, and meanwhile, expenses add up: It can cost tens of millions of dollars to retrain officers, hire new ones and modify use-of-force policies.

“Cities don’t want to invest their scarce resources in the costly process of reforming a police department,” said Stephen Rushin, a visiting assistant professor of law at the University of Illinois who is working on a book about police reform. “Typically, it takes away from investments in schools, roads, parks, other things the city is going to value.”

Then again, the city is already spending millions in legal settlements with people alleging officers have injured them or killed family members. The mayor and Police Commissioner Anthony Batts asked for the Justice Department review last year after The Baltimore Sun tallied $5.7 million in payouts to resolve more than 100 police misconduct lawsuits since 2011.

The voluntary review should result in recommendations and give the city access to federal funds to implement them, but they would not be enforced by any court order or independent monitor.

Meanwhile, Baltimore faces financial challenges so serious that in 2013, the mayor hired outside consultants who forecast that the local government was on the path to insolvency. The mayor has implemented spending reforms, but has little leeway to raise taxes. The city’s property taxes are already the highest in Maryland after being raised repeatedly between 1950 and 1985, in part to cover the cost of city services as the city lost manufacturing jobs and shed population.

Some residents and legal advocates think the city’s government won’t be able to impose change unless it’s forced to.

“There’s skepticism about how thorough and effective any kind of collaborative process will be,” said Sonia Kumar, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Maryland. “The measure of success is really whether people feel that things are different on the street in their interactions with police.”

Randy Howell, 55, who grew up in the Sandtown-Winchester neighbourhood where Gray was arrested, says far more than federal intervention is needed to set things right. The city, state and federal governments need to address what he calls the root causes of crime: high unemployment, poor schools, grinding poverty and a lack of amenities.

“The first thing they need to do is get rid of them vans,” Howell said. “Those vans are a death trap. … Other police departments don’t use them. And body cameras. But they also need to change the people and the neighbourhood.”

]]>Records show worries over mental stability of Baltimore officerhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/world/records-show-worries-over-mental-stability-of-baltimore-officer/
Fri, 01 May 2015 09:40:02 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=714269Lt. Brian Rice, who initially pursued Freddie Gray, was hospitalized three years ago over concerns about his mental health

]]>BALTIMORE – The top Baltimore city police officer suspended following Freddie Gray’s death was hospitalized in April 2012 following concerns about his mental health, according to records from a sheriff’s department and court obtained by The Associated Press.

Worries about Lt. Brian Rice’s stability – originally raised by a fellow Baltimore police officer who is the mother of his child – led deputies to confiscate his guns and contact high-ranking police officials, the report says.

Rice, who initially pursued Gray on a Baltimore street when Gray fled after Rice made eye contact April 12, declared three years ago that he “could not continue to go on like this” and threatened to commit an act that was censored in the public version of a report obtained by the AP from the Carroll County, Maryland, Sheriff’s Office. Rice lived in the county, about 35 miles northwest of Baltimore.

Deputies reported that Rice appeared “normal and soft spoken” and said he had been seeking “sympathy and attention.” But citing “credible information,” the deputies confiscated both his official and personal guns, called his commanding officer and transported Rice to the Carroll Hospital Center. The weapons included his .40-calibre police pistol, a 9 mm handgun, an AK-47-style rifle, a .22-calibre rifle and two shotguns.

It was not immediately clear how long Rice was at the hospital or whether he went on his own accord. Rice declined to speak with the AP or discuss allegations in a subsequent court filing that he had behaved in erratic or threatening ways toward the mother of his child or her then-husband. When the AP visited Rice’s home last week and left a note requesting an interview, Rice called the sheriff’s department to report the visit as trespassing. Karen McAleer, the mother of his son, also declined to speak with the AP.

The events described in the 2012 report provided the basis for one of at least two administrative suspensions for Rice in 2012 and 2013, a person familiar with the police department staff said. This person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential personnel matters.

The incidents described in the sheriff’s report and court records involving Rice’s personal problems portray allegations of concerns about self-control and judgment, as Baltimore police and the Justice Department investigate the injuries that Gray, 25, sustained in police custody. Police have said Gray ran after making eye contact with Rice. After a brief chase, Gray was arrested “without force or incident,” according to a report filled out by one of the officers, though witness video shows officers kneeling around Gray while he screams. After being transported in the back of a police van, Gray was found unable to talk or breathe and died one week later from spinal trauma.

It also was not immediately clear whether or when all of Rice’s guns were returned. The sheriff’s report said the weapons “should be returned back to owner pending determination of the (censored).” But Rice was accused in June 2012 of removing a semi-automatic handgun from the trunk of his personal vehicle and threatening McAleer, according to a complaint filed in 2013. A police report about that June 2012 incident omitted any reference to allegations that Rice brandished a weapon but noted that officers who responded spent hours searching for Rice over concerns for his welfare.

Baltimore police were made aware of worries that Rice might pose a risk to himself or others, according to the April 2012 sheriff’s report. Sheriff’s deputies spoke to a police commander for the city’s western district, where Rice worked, who initially requested that deputies not fax the report with details about their experiences with Rice because he would make arrangements to pick up a copy of the report and Rice’s service weapon. The official, whose name is twice misspelled, appeared to be James Handley, a police major who now heads Baltimore police’s property division.

A police spokesman, Capt. John Kowalczyk, said he could not comment on matters that might involve an officer’s personnel file. Speaking generally of department procedure, Kowalczyk said that the department had overhauled its procedures for dealing with discipline and employees who need help with personal matters since the arrival of Police Commissioner Anthony Batts in September 2012.

“These are tremendous changes to how we hold people accountable,” Kowalczyk said. He credited the changes for what he said were recent declines in complaints about officer misconduct and an increase in the percentage of disciplinary actions sustained by the police department’s trial board.

An attorney representing Rice, Michael Davey, did not respond Thursday to phone calls from AP asking to discuss the sheriff’s report about Rice’s hospitalization or gun seizures. Earlier in the week, he dismissed the significance of Rice also being placed on administrative leave as a result of a complaint in January 2013 by McAleer’s then-husband, Andrew, a former Baltimore firefighter who said Rice threatened him and asked for a court protective order. Those threat claims were initially reported by The Guardian newspaper.

Andrew McAleer, who did not respond to a note left at his last known address in court records, wrote to a judge that Rice had been transported in the earlier incident “to a local hospital for a mental health evaluation.” A judge granted the protective order but allowed it to expire after one week.

“People file peace orders all the time,” Davey said. “The only thing I’d comment on is, any issues similar to this had nothing to do with his ability to perform his duties as a Baltimore police officer.”

The Carroll County Sheriff’s Office did not explain why it censored parts of the report it provided to the AP. Maryland law allows law enforcement officials to protect details about a person’s medical or psychological condition in public records.

]]>Hundreds rally in New York, Boston after death of Baltimore manhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/world/hundreds-rally-in-new-york-boston-after-death-of-baltimore-man/
Thu, 30 Apr 2015 09:52:34 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=713741"When we truly recognize that #BlackLivesMatter we take a large step towards ensuring that #AllLivesMatter.''

]]>NEW YORK – Hundreds of people rallied and marched in New York and Boston to protest the death of a Baltimore man who was critically injured in police custody as Philadelphia activists prepared for their own demonstration.

At least 60 people were arrested in New York on Wednesday night after police on a loudspeaker warned them they would be taken into custody if they marched in the street.

Protesters first rallied in Manhattan’s Union Square, where they chanted “no justice, no peace” and “hands up, don’t shoot,” a reference to the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, last year.

Then a group of protesters spilled into the street, disrupting traffic. Dozens of police officers moved in with plastic handcuffs and began making arrests while officers with batons pushed the crowd back onto the sidewalk.

In Boston, activists gathered in a park behind police headquarters in Roxbury and continued with a peaceful march to a park at Dudley Square, across from the Roxbury neighbourhood police station.

Nikea Ramsey, whose brother, Burrell Ramsey-White, was shot and killed in an encounter with Boston police in 2012, said, “Me and my family, we stand with Baltimore. We stand with Ferguson. This is too much and it’s getting out of hand.”

In a statement, Darnell Williams, president and CEO of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, said the civil rights organization “supports those who have chosen to exercise their First Amendment Right to peacefully assemble and let the world know that when we truly recognize that #BlackLivesMatter we take a large step towards ensuring that #AllLivesMatter.”

Boston organizers said they want “amnesty” for the some 300 protesters and rioters who have been arrested in Baltimore, as well as a lifting of the city curfew and state of emergency declaration.

In Philadelphia, protesters plan to conduct the “Philly is Baltimore” demonstration Thursday afternoon at city hall. They’ve drawn parallels between the death of a local man shot during a traffic stop and the April 19 death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore.

The district attorney is not pressing charges in the December shooting death of Brandon Tate-Brown in Philadelphia, saying evidence indicates that he was reaching into his car for a loaded pistol. A lawsuit filed Tuesday alleges that officers planted the gun.

In New York Wednesday night, small groups of protesters split off from the main demonstration with one group heading to Times Square, where it held a die-in by lying on the ground. Another group marched to the entrance of the Holland Tunnel as others blocked streets.

Comrade Shahid said he showed up because he believes “the police have become out of control.”

Gray’s arrest was recorded on cellphone videos by bystanders. His death has led to protests, rioting and looting in Baltimore.

Baltimore police say they chased Gray when he fled at the sight of an officer in a drug-infested neighbourhood this month. Officers pinned him to the sidewalk and then lifted him and took him, his legs dragging on the ground, to a police van.

Gray, who asked repeatedly for medical help during the half-hour ride to a police station, died a week later.

Police say Gray died of a “significant spinal injury.” An attorney for Gray’s family says his spine was “80 per cent severed in the neck area.”

]]>MISSISSAUGA, Ont. – Ontario’s police watchdog says a 30-year-old man is dead and two Peel Regional Police officers and another civilian were wounded after an incident late Friday night in Mississauga, just west of Toronto.

The Special Investigations Unit says the man was shot multiple times and pronounced dead at the scene.

Peel Regional Police said Friday night that one officer was shot and the other was stabbed, and described the injuries as serious. The SIU says the injuries to the officers and the civilian are not life-life threatening.

The incident happened after police responded to a call (on Queen Frederica Drive near Dundas and Dixie) and “interacted” with a man.

The SIU has assigned five investigators and three forensic investigators to probe the circumstances of the incident. Three subject officers and seven witness officers have been designated.

The agency wants to hear from anyone with information about the incident.

The SIU is an arm’s length agency that investigates reports involving police where there has been death, serious injury or allegations of sexual assault.

]]>FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) – Two officers were shot during a protest in front of the Ferguson Police Department early Thursday, authorities said, as demonstrators gathered following the resignation of the embattled police chief of the St. Louis suburb.

A 32-year-old officer from nearby Webster Groves was shot in the face and a 41-year-old officer from St. Louis County was shot in the shoulder, St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said at a news conference. Both were taken to a local hospital, where Belmar said they were conscious. He described their injuries as “serious.”

“I don’t know who did the shooting, to be honest with you,” Belmar said, adding that he could not provide a description of the suspect or gun.

He said his “assumption” was that, based on where the officers were standing and the trajectory of the bullets, “these shots were directed exactly at my officers.”

The shots were fired as protesters had gathered following the resignation of Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson on Wednesday. He was the sixth employee to resign or be fired after a Justice Department report cleared white former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson of civil rights charges in the shooting of black 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson last summer.

A separate Justice Department report found a profit-driven court system and widespread racial bias in the city police department.

Jackson oversaw the Ferguson force for nearly five years before the shooting that stirred months of unrest across the St. Louis region and drew global attention to the predominantly black city of 21,000.

Jackson had previously resisted calls by protesters and some of Missouri’s top elected leaders to step down over his handling of Brown’s shooting and the weeks of sometimes-violent protests that followed. He was widely criticized from the outset, both for an aggressive police response to protesters and for his agency’s erratic and infrequent releases of key information.

During a 12-minute news conference, Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III said Jackson resigned after “a lot of soul-searching” about how the community could heal from the racial unrest stemming from the fatal shooting last summer.

“The chief is the kind of honourable man you don’t have to go to,” Knowles said. “He comes to you when he knows that this is something we have to seriously discuss.”

The acting head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division released a statement saying the U.S. government remains committed to reaching a “court-enforceable agreement” to address Ferguson’s “unconstitutional practices,” regardless of who’s in charge of the city.

]]>Investigation promised after police kill girl who hit officer with carhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/world/investigation-promised-after-police-kill-girl-who-hit-officer-with-car/
Wed, 28 Jan 2015 10:37:47 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=671203The other passenger has said the police shot the girl first, causing her to lose control of the car

]]>DENVER – A passenger who was in a car when a 17-year-old girl was shot and killed by Denver police has disputed authorities’ account of her death, saying officers opened fire before one of them was struck by the vehicle.

The passenger, speaking late Tuesday to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because of safety concerns, said her friend, Jessica Hernandez, lost control of the vehicle because she was unconscious after being shot.

Police have said the Monday morning shooting in a residential alley came after Hernandez drove a stolen vehicle into one of them.

Prosecutors on Tuesday promised a thorough probe of the shooting as a small group of angry protesters demanded swift answers and called for a special prosecutor to investigate the death.

The shooting occurred amid a national debate about police use of force fueled by racially charged episodes in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City.

It was also the fourth time in seven months that a Denver police officer fired into a moving vehicle after perceiving it as a threat, and the city’s independent police monitor now says he will investigate the department’s policies and practices related to shooting at moving vehicles, which he said poses unique safety risks.

Police spokesman Sonny Jackson offered no new details about the case on Tuesday, citing the department’s open investigation.

The shooting happened after an officer was called to check on a suspicious vehicle, Chief Robert White has said. A colleague arrived after the officer determined the car had been reported stolen. Police have said the two officers approached the car on foot when Hernandez drove into one of them, and they both then opened fire.

The car’s passenger said police had surrounded the car in the alley, and Hernandez was trying to flee, attempting to dive around one of the squad cars.

The officers came up to the car from behind and fired four times into the driver’s side window, narrowly missing others inside, the passenger said.

Hernandez wrecked the car into a fence after she was shot, according to the witness. Police said the officer suffered a leg injury for which he was treated at a hospital and released.

Officers with their guns drawn then pulled people out of the car, including Hernandez, who they handcuffed and searched.

The passenger was unaware the vehicle was stolen and provided only vague details about what the group of teenagers was doing earlier in the night.

By law, police are allowed to use force to stop and overcome the resistance of another person. They can use it to match the force and overcome it.

Both officers involved in the shooting have been placed on routine administrative leave pending the investigation.

]]>Police forces balk at tracking fees imposed by Rogershttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/police-forces-balk-at-tracking-fees-imposed-by-rogers/
Mon, 12 Jan 2015 10:39:31 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=663875Rogers says it will charge a fee for some requests by police, but RCMP says the company is legally obligated to bear the costs

]]>OTTAWA – The RCMP and many other police forces are refusing to pay new fees imposed by Rogers Communications for helping track suspects through their mobile phones.

Police say the telecommunications firm is legally obligated to provide such court-ordered services and to cover the cost as part of its duty to society.

Rogers says while it picks up the tab for most judicially approved requests, in some cases it will charge a minimal fee.

The quietly simmering dispute underscores long-standing tensions over who should pay when police call on telephone and Internet providers to help investigate cases.

It began late last May when Rogers wrote to RCMP divisions and other police services across Canada to say it would usher in new fees to law enforcement on Aug. 1 . The fees applied to help in executing warrants for tracking customers’ movements through cellphone data, and for production of affidavits certifying records in cases where testimony is required to explain the records in court.

RCMP officials responsible for covert operations told their superiors in a June briefing note there was no legal basis for the planned fees and that Rogers could be charged under the Criminal Code for failing to comply with a court order if it refused to provide the services unless compensated.

The note, obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act, points to a 2008 Supreme Court of Canada decision in which the judges said companies would generally be expected to comply with court orders on their own dime unless costs became unreasonable.

In the case at hand, the court said it was not unreasonable for Tele-Mobile Co. to pay annual costs of between $400,000 and $800,000 to comply with production orders.

The RCMP note suggested that the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police be asked to issue a collective response to Rogers that “police will not be paying the fees requested.”

The association’s board was briefed in late June, and early the next month the chiefs recommended to police services that they not sign “acknowledgment of fees” notices distributed by Rogers.

“It is the (association’s) view that police services throughout Canada should not be required to bear the costs associated with court-ordered activities,” the recommendation said. “The demand for these services will only increase as electronic crimes committed over mobile services continues to grow.”

The chiefs interpret the Supreme Court decision as requiring Rogers to “bear the reasonable burdens of compliance with such orders as part of its general corporate responsibility to the community,” said Tim Smith, a spokesman for the association.

Rogers spokesman Kevin Spafford said the company dropped the demand for fees related to affidavits prior to the Aug. 1 changes.

However, where possible Rogers does recover costs for location tracking of mobile devices, Spafford said.

“For most court-ordered requests for information, we assume all costs associated with providing a response,” he said. “In some cases we charge a minimal fee to recover our costs based on the work required to comply with requests.”

It was up to individual police services to decide whether to sign the Rogers agreements, Smith said.

However, the association understands that “a vast majority” heeded the recommendation and are not paying the fees, he added.

Smith stressed that – the current disagreement notwithstanding – police services across Canada “enjoy a positive business relationship” with Rogers.

Sgt. Greg Cox, an RCMP spokesman, also said there had been “no substantive change” in the force’s dealings with Rogers or other telecommunications firms.

Rogers, the RCMP and the chiefs’ association all refused to say how much money the company is requesting under the new fee structure.

Although they have concerns about the new Rogers fees, the Mounties did pay more than $2 million to telecom firms in 2012-13 in connection with customer information and intercept-related activities, the force says.

“The RCMP is working with all major telcos to determine sustainability of the current situation and associated costs,” Cox said.

]]>By turning their backs, police are deepening America’s tribalismhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/world/by-turning-their-backs-on-elected-officials-police-are-deepening-americas-tribalism/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/by-turning-their-backs-on-elected-officials-police-are-deepening-americas-tribalism/#commentsFri, 09 Jan 2015 15:10:42 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=660991The Editorial: Public criticism is not betrayal. And by ignoring that, U.S. police are highlighting a dangerous social divide.

America’s streets are turning black and blue. A rising tide of urban tribalism, most readily apparent in the deplorable behaviour of New York City cops, is bad news for democracy and civil discourse south of the border.

Following the high-profile deaths of two black men at the hands of white police officers in Missouri and New York City—and in response to street protests and social media campaigns expressing outrage that none of the officers involved faced criminal repercussions—many U.S. politicians properly acknowledged the enormous racial divide in American law enforcement. President Barack Obama called it “one of the most important issues I face.” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio similarly expressed sympathy for the protesters. “The way we go about policing has to change,” he said. It seems a rather obvious point to make. Yet such criticism has sparked an ugly political power play.

After the murder of two New York police detectives, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, by an African-American man on Dec. 20, police union president Patrick Lynch provocatively declared, “There’s blood on many hands tonight [and it] starts on the steps of city hall in the office of the mayor.” At the funerals of Ramos in December and Liu this past Sunday, hundreds of New York police officers in formal dress uniform turned their backs on de Blasio as he delivered an official eulogy. Others signed a petition asking the mayor not to come to their funeral if they’re killed in the line of duty. And weekly city crime statistics reveal a sudden drop-off in arrests, summonses and parking tickets, suggesting the possibility of a covert work-to-rule campaign by angry cops. It’s not quite open rebellion against civilian authority. But it’s dangerously close.

This rift between the mayor, an elected official who speaks for all New Yorkers, and police—sworn to protect the city and its inhabitants—has deep roots. Pugnacious police union officials tend to treat all mayors with hostility; even tireless law-and-order advocate Rudy Giuliani suffered protests from the boys in blue during his time in office. So payback for Democrat de Blasio, who campaigned on a platform overtly critical of police, is to be expected.

Beyond such municipal machinations, however, the actions of New York’s “finest” threaten to damage the reputation of police officers everywhere. Policing is an honourable, admirable and utterly necessary component of any free society. It’s also dangerous business, as evidenced by the deaths of Ramos and Liu, not to mention the murder of three RCMP officers in Moncton last June. Those who enter the profession are typically driven by a deep interest in protecting and serving others, a fact repeatedly and gratefully acknowledged by de Blasio, Obama and many other critics.

That said, no one can put himself above the law, or claim public criticism to be tantamount to betrayal. Public-police relations in Canada are generally positive, because police here accept close scrutiny as a key component of the legal system. Outside Quebec, any suspicious death in Canada involving a police officer is investigated by an independent body, insulating police from suspicions of a cover-up and raising public confidence in the process. (Surely, it’s time Quebec caught up to the rest of the country in this regard.) Where systemic problems have occurred—various RCMP scandals, for example, or the G20 summit—the public response has been to demand improvement. And, by and large, police have accepted such critiques with an appropriate sense of obligation, at least after the fact.

By contrast, the stridently reflexive reaction to their critics displayed by New York police is not only ill-founded, but suggestive of a growing lack of cohesion throughout American society. Demands for unstinting loyalty to one’s tribe—be it race, religion, political belief or occupation, regardless of evidence or arguments—has become disturbingly commonplace since 9/11, and to no good effect. “America’s new tribalism can be seen most distinctly in its politics,” Robert Reich, former secretary of labour under president Bill Clinton wrote last year, lamenting the ways in which Republicans and Democrats increasingly live separate lives. “Each tribe is headed by a rival warlord whose fighting has almost brought the national government in Washington to a halt,” he writes.

If the U.S. loses the ability to have a coherent conversation, let alone achieve consensus, on topics of national importance, then real progress will become impossible. Democracy demands a recognition of legitimate points of view different from one’s own. On the issue of race and policing, politicians must, obviously, refrain from demonizing cops for political gain. But police must also show respect for the views of elected officials, and accept that criticism is a necessary first step to self-improvement. Law enforcement is a vital profession and a public service with a long and noble tradition. No one should turn his back on that.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/by-turning-their-backs-on-elected-officials-police-are-deepening-americas-tribalism/feed/1US law enforcement gun deaths jumped by more than half in 2014http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/us-law-enforcement-deaths-by-guns-jumped-by-more-than-half-in-2014/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/us-law-enforcement-deaths-by-guns-jumped-by-more-than-half-in-2014/#commentsTue, 30 Dec 2014 13:43:47 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=658035The sharp increase in gun-related deaths among officers followed a dramatic dip in 2013, when the figure fell to levels not seen since the 19th century

]]>WASHINGTON – The number of law enforcement officers killed by firearms in the U.S. jumped by 56 per cent this year and included 15 ambush assaults, according to a report released Tuesday.

The annual report by the non-profit National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund found that 50 officers were killed by guns this year, compared to 32 in 2013.

In all, the report found that 126 federal, local, tribal and territorial officers were killed in the line of duty in 2014. That’s a 24 per cent jump from last year’s 102 on-duty deaths. Shootings were the leading cause of officer deaths in 2014 followed by traffic-related fatalities, at 49.

The sharp increase in gun-related deaths among officers followed a dramatic dip in 2013, when the figure fell to levels not seen since the 19th century. This year’s uptick comes amid increased tension between police and the public following the high-profile deaths of unarmed black men by white police officers, including that of Eric Garner in New York and Michael Brown in Missouri.

The 15 ambush assaults on police officers this year compares to just five in 2013, but matched 2012 for the highest total since 1995, the report said.

Among the ambush assaults were the fatal attacks on two police officers in New York City on Dec. 20. Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were gunned down in their patrol car by Ismaaiyl Brinsley after Brinsley had made threatening posts online, including a vow to put “wings on pigs” and references to the Garner and Brown cases.

After shooting the officers, Brinsley ran into a subway station and killed himself. Police said he was troubled and had shot and wounded an ex-girlfriend in Baltimore earlier that day.

“With the increasing number of ambush-style attacks against our officers, I am deeply concerned that a growing anti-government sentiment in America is influencing weak-minded individuals to launch violent assaults against the men and women working to enforce our laws and keep our nation safe,” said Craig Floyd, chairman and CEO of the memorial fund.

]]>NEW YORK – Thousands of uniformed police officers from New York City and around the country gathered at the solemn, eight-hour wake of a city policeman who was killed along with his partner in a brazen daytime shooting a week ago.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, who had been criticized by the police union for his handling of protests critical of officers, briefly attended Officer Rafael Ramos’ viewing Friday at the Christ Tabernacle Church in Queens, where Ramos was brought in a flag-draped casket and viewed in full dress uniform.

“Dad, I’m forever grateful of the sacrifices you made to provide for me and Jaden,” Ramos’ son, Justin, said during the wake, referring to his younger brother, as officers gathered in the street watched on giant television screens.

Ramos’ funeral is scheduled for Saturday. Vice-President Joseph Biden and Mayor de Blasio have said they’ll attend. The funeral for Ramos’ partner, Officer Wenjian Liu, hasn’t yet been announced.

Throughout the day, colleagues and those who knew him described Ramos as a selfless and compassionate man.

Pastor Ralph Castillo said Ramos was a beloved member of the church.

“Whether he was helping a mom with a carriage or bringing someone to their seats, he did it with so much love and so much vigour and so much joy,” Castillo said.

The 40-year-old’s commanding officer, NYPD Capt. Sergio Centa, said he was studying to be a pastor.

“He had Bible study books in his locker, which is rare for a police officer, but that goes to show you the type of man he was,” Centa said.

Ramos and Liu were shot to death without warning Dec. 20 while sitting in their patrol car on a Brooklyn street.

Gunman Ismaaiyl Brinsley, before he attacked Ramos and Liu, had referenced in online posts the high-profile killings by white police officers of unarmed black men, specifically Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner on Staten Island. Brinsley, who was black, committed suicide soon after shooting the officers.

Their killings ramped up emotions in the already tense national debate over police conduct. Since the deaths, police in New York say they have arrested seven people accused of threatening officers.

Police union officials have criticized de Blasio, saying he contributed to a climate of mistrust toward police amid protests over the deaths of black men at the hands of white officers. Union officials have said the mayor’s response, including his mention of how he often fears for the safety of his biracial son in his interactions with police, helped set the stage for the killings.

There was no reaction from officers at Ramos’ viewing when de Blasio arrived shortly after 9 p.m. and left about 15 minutes later.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who attended the wake earlier in the day, has called for calm after the head of the police union said the mayor had blood on his hands the day Ramos and Liu were killed.

And after the killings, de Blasio called for a temporary halt to demonstrations, denouncing as “divisive” a demonstration that took place anyway on Thursday.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Friday the officers’ deaths were senseless and said officials were reviewing the case to see what could be done, if anything, legislatively to prevent a further killing.

For Ramos’ sister Sindy Ramos, there was no consolation.

“Help me understand why God took you from me so soon,” she said through tears in a eulogy.

]]>Montreal cop accused of roughing up students to be triedhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/montreal-cop-accused-of-roughing-up-students/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/montreal-cop-accused-of-roughing-up-students/#commentsFri, 12 Dec 2014 23:56:46 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=652673The Crown will use a streamlined process to deal with an assault charge against Montreal's "Officer 728"

]]>OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says the country’s homicide rate fell last year to 1.44 victims for every 100,000 people, its lowest level since 1966.

The agency says the 2013 rate was eight per cent lower than in 2012.

It says police reported 505 homicides in 2013, down 38 from the previous year.

The report attributes the overall decrease in homicides to a drop of 40 deaths reported in Quebec after two years of higher-than-average numbers of homicides in the province.

Quebec reported 68 homicides in 2013, representing a rate of 0.83 per 100,000 population, the lowest rate recorded in the province since reporting began in 1961.

Six provinces reported modest increases in the number of homicides in 2013, although even with these increases, the homicide rates in nearly every province and territory were below their 10-year averages in 2013.

The exceptions were Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island, where the 2013 homicide rates were above their previous 10-year average.

Homicide rates continued to be generally highest in the West and the North. Provincially, Manitoba reported the highest homicide rate with 3.87 per 100,000 population, followed by Saskatchewan with 2.71, Alberta at 2.04 and British Columbia with 1.66.

Nunavut, with 11.24 per 100,000, and the Northwest Territories, with 4.59, reported homicide rates higher than any province, while there were no homicides in Yukon for the third consecutive year.

Among metropolitan areas, Regina reported the highest homicide rate at 3.84 per 100,000 population, followed by Winnipeg and Thunder Bay.

Homicide rates were below the national average in the two largest metropolitan areas, as Toronto had a rate of 1.34 and Montreal was at 1.08.

Vancouver, at 1.72, was above the national average.

Firearm-related homicides were down, but fatal stabbings increased. There were 131 homicides tied to guns in 2013, down 41 from 2012. This was the lowest rate of firearm-related homicide since comparable data became available in 1974.

Shooting still accounted for about a quarter of homicides.

Most gun-related homicides were committed with handguns, a trend that has held over the last 20 years. Despite this, the rate of handgun-related homicides reached its lowest point since 1998.

The number of fatal stabbings grew by 31 cases, to 195 deaths. Knives accounted for about 40 per cent of all homicides.

Gang-related homicides fell to 85 in 2013, compared with 96 reported the previous year. It was the first drop after three years of steady numbers.

The rate of gang-related homicide was 0.24 per 100,000 population, its lowest level since 2004. The rate of gang killings was highest in British Columbia and Manitoba.

The victims in almost 90 per cent of homicides knew their killers. The rate of stranger homicide was at its lowest level in over 40 years.

The number of victims of homicide committed by a current or former spouse, common-law partner, dating partner or other intimate partner decreased in 2013. There were 68 intimate partner homicides reported in 2013, 14 fewer than in the previous year.

Darren Wilson is a white, 28-year-old male, measuring six foot four and weighing about 210 lb. As such, he is typical of the police department in Ferguson, Mo., on which he served—and whose uniform he wore on the day he shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black man. Ferguson, which is nearly 70 per cent black, is served by an overwhelmingly white police force, a fact underlined by a variety of mostly liberal publications to denounce the often dangerous disconnect between the communities and the police forces that serve them.

There is certainly something to this, not the least of which is that this racial discrepancy is most predominant in small- and medium-sized cities such as Ferguson, where the de facto segregation of American society is at its most acute. If justice fails when it is even perceived to have a colour, then justice is rarely served in places like Ferguson.

Yet, a look at the research suggests the problem of police officers killing unarmed black men is not all about white police forces. In 2002, University of Chicago psychology professor Joshua Correll published The Police Officer’s Dilemma, a landmark study testing racial bias. Correll and his team devised a video game-type experiment in which test subjects were shown images of black and white males, some armed, some not. The subjects had to decide when and when not to shoot.

The results speak for themselves. “Participants fired at an armed target more quickly if he was African American than if he was white, and decided not to shoot an unarmed white target more quickly than an unarmed African American target.”

Here’s the kicker, though: Correll found little difference in the willingness (or not) to shoot between black and white test subjects. In 2007, he replicated the study with actual police officers, and came to a similar conclusion: A young black male is as likely to be a target of a black police officer as his Caucasian partner.

The implications of this are serious, and suggest that black people are as prone to racially based tropes as their white compatriots. It’s no surprise that the lone black cop in John Singleton’s Boyz N The Hood is at his masochistic worst when dealing with black teenagers, or that Ice Cube rapped about “Black police showing out for the white cop” in 1988’s F–k Tha Police.

It further brings to mind Bill Cosby’s admonishment of black society for being anti-family and decidedly casual in its dress—“fighting to be ignorant,” as Cosby said in a 2004 speech. (His bit about “young girls getting after some girl who wants to remain a virgin” is particularly stomach-churning in light of his alleged long history of rape.)

In a sense, Michael Brown was victim to the most deadly demonstration of how black males (and blacks in general) are less likely to be given the benefit of the doubt. Even if his life doesn’t end at the hands of a cop, a black youth will face myriad examples of as much throughout his life.

Statistically, as a recent Kirwan Institute study suggests, he is more likely to be singled out as aggressive, mean and/or intellectually deficient for similar behaviour than a white kid. Should he enter into the justice system, he is more likely to be charged with a greater crime than someone with lighter skin; even if he isn’t, the black kid is more likely to be treated more harshly by judges and jurors.

Several studies have shown how blacks are more likely to be sentenced to death when their victims are white; yet another shows a correlation between death penalty sentences and typically black features. In America, the darker your skin and the fuller your lips, the higher the likelihood you will be sentenced to die for your crimes.

The Ferguson police department, like most law enforcement agencies in America, is probably too white for Ferguson itself. Sadly, though, it probably doesn’t matter that officer Wilson was a demonstration of that truth. Michael Brown would probably be just as dead today, were a black officer behind the wheel that day.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper hugs the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada Justin Trudeau in the House of Commons on Thursday October 23, 2014 in Ottawa. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

Sen. Vern White’s story about where he was when gunshots echoed through the Parliament buildings lacks immediacy, but makes up for it in irony. The former chief of the Ottawa police, appointed to the Senate by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2007, wasn’t on Parliament Hill the morning of Oct. 22. White was giving a lecture at an Ottawa meeting of police oversight agencies about how police should confront mental illness and radicalization—two closely connected factors that now top the law-enforcement agenda.“I was just finishing with questions and answers when the shooting happened,” White says.

In fact, the questions have only just begun, as Canada, like other Western democracies shaken by so-called “lone wolf” terrorist attacks, searches for answers. White urges patient police outreach to Muslim communities to build relationships that might yield tips about troubled young men who show signs of turning violent. But he’s for strengthening police and intelligence-agency powers, too. That’s where the Harper government is moving quickly. Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney tabled long-planned legislation this week to give the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) a clearer mandate to share information on suspected Canadian terrorists with allies, including the U.S. and Britain, and to keep secret sources secret, even from judges during court proceedings.

Further legislation to toughen police anti-terrorism powers is coming soon, and will likely be more controversial than the tweak to CSIS’s clout. For critics who might accuse the government of reacting rashly in the heat of the moment, Blaney had his lines ready. “We will not overreact,” he said in the House, “but it is also time that we stop under-reacting to the great threats against us.” One strong possibility is that he will try to make it easier for police to use existing powers under the Anti-terrorism Act and the Criminal Code. Those powers allow them to arrest someone suspected of plotting a terrorist attack or put restrictions on a suspect’s movements, even when there isn’t sufficient evidence to lay charges.

But University of Ottawa international affairs professor Wesley Wark, a leading national security expert, says those preventive-arrest powers are very rarely useful. “They imagine the circumstance in which security agencies are aware of an imminent plot, but don’t have quite enough evidence to bring charges, and aren’t quite sure how to disrupt it,” Wark says. “The number of occasions in which that exact circumstance occurs is vanishingly small.”

What reforms might be more practical, more often? Blaney wasn’t tipping his hand, only saying that the government will “go further in providing tools to our law-enforcement agencies.” Even police, though, weren’t claiming any new powers would have helped them to prevent Michael Zehaf-Bibeau from killing Cpl. Nathan Cirillo at the National War Memorial, before authorities shot him dead in Parliament’s Centre Block.

At an appearance before a Senate committee this week, RCMP Deputy Commissioner Mike Cabana was asked by White what new legal tools the force needs. Referring to Zehaf-Bibeau, Cabana said: “I’m not sure what kind of tools we would have to have in place to prevent all kinds of incidents like the one we saw last week, especially if the planning behind the incident is just done by one individual with very little collaboration from anybody else.”

Anti-terrorism experts agree that isolated men susceptible to online radicalization by Islamist extremists pose a daunting challenge. Still, they point to promising tactics. Criminology professor Mark Hamm of Indiana State University looked at 98 cases of lone-wolf terrorism in the U.S. from 1940 to 2013, and found virtually all told someone beforehand about their violent inclinations. “Now, if lone wolves announce their intentions, preventative steps can be taken,” Hamm says. “They don’t operate in a social vacuum.”

Connecting with the groups most likely to detect those early danger signals requires meticulous network-building by local police. Before becoming a senator, White worked for years on police forces trying to make inroads in urban neighbourhoods, where not only potential terrorists, but also potential gang members, might be incubated. “How do they turn, usually a young male’s head, toward something the rest of us can’t understand? By finding somebody who has nothing to live for and giving him something to die for,” he says.

White admits police might never reach someone like Zehaf-Bibeau in time to steer him off a violent path, but they have proven they can forge ties to others who will alert them when an individual shows worrying signs of adopting radical views. For instance, the RCMP credits Muslim community sources with providing the tips that allowed them to thwart a plot to attack a Via Rail train last year in Toronto, and a Muslim informant infiltrated the so-called Toronto 18 in 2005.

The Mounties don’t seem comfortable, though, with all outreach efforts. The federal force worked closely with Muslim groups for more than a year in drafting an anti-radicalization handbook, called “United Against Terrorism,” only to withdraw formal support just before the publication was launched last month in Winnipeg. RCMP headquarters released a statement calling the booklet too “adversarial,” but Shahina Siddiqui, executive director of the Islamic Social Services Association of Canada, said the force still hasn’t given her any explanation about what content it found objectionable.

Tensions between Muslim leaders and police and intelligence officials have simmered for years. Back in 2005, CSIS met with Muslim groups in Toronto to try to ease distrust that had grown after the 9/11 attacks. An Islamic cleric said CSIS hadn’t reached out to mosque leaders for help in investigations. “You should have called us,” the imam chided. “You have a phone, too,” a CSIS officer shot back. Despite that sort of friction, experts say there is just no substitute for working to share information in the era of Internet-fuelled radicalization. “Community engagement should be absolutely instrumental in our response,” says Frank Cilluffo, director of George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute, in Washington.

That sort of long-term groundwork is labour-intensive, and not cheap. So far, complaints about the RCMP and CSIS budgets being squeezed in recent years have been only a low, background hum in the discussion following the recent attacks. That could change. Blaney’s Public Safety department, which funds both the RCMP and CSIS, sustained three years of cuts, starting with the belt-tightening 2012 federal budget. Wark says he and some other independent analysts had argued that security and intelligence should not have been subject to government-wide restraint aimed at balancing the budget, “but nobody was listening to that.”

Beyond rethinking the impact of those cuts, Wark says a sweeping assessment of how Ottawa confronts terrorist threats is overdue. He says a “revolution” in intelligence and police tactics in Canada followed the attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001. “We have changed an enormous amount in resources, legal powers, the roles of our intelligence agencies, the way they interact,” Wark says. “What’s worked, what hasn’t, what still needs to be done? There should be a macro look across the board. If we’re serious about all this, we don’t dive into new legal powers.”

Confidence in the government’s ability to grasp that big picture is perhaps undermined by the now obvious shortcomings in how it handles security around Parliament itself. As Blaney moved on his files, House Speaker Andrew Scheer ordered a full review of Hill security.

Michel Austin, now a senior adviser with the consulting firm Summa Strategies, was chief of staff to former Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose during the last review of Hill security in 2012. Austin says those complicated talks—involving Public Works, separate House and Senate security services, the RCMP and Ottawa police, among others—ended up focusing on keeping cars and trucks from speeding onto the parliamentary grounds from the surrounding streets. “It was supposed to be super-pedestrian-accessible, super-not-accessible for cars,” Austin said. New measures to the stop a lone attacker on foot from running straight into the Parliament buildings, as Zehaf-Bibeau did, now seem inevitable.

Stopping disturbed loners before they reach the point of lashing out is a much tougher challenge. In the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 22 attack, political parties put aside their differences out of respect for Cirillo’s sacrifice and shared shock over how violence had invaded such symbolic national spaces. NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau even embraced Harper on the floor of the House. But, as the government moves beyond channelling the nation’s distress to boosting police powers, the moment for hugging is over. It’s time for an informed debate over what police powers are really needed to prevent lone attackers, along with more organized terrorists, and what police strategies really work.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-moment-for-hugging-is-over-its-time-to-debate-policing-powers/feed/1Ferguson fallout: Lawmaker asks for controls on military giveaways to policehttp://www.macleans.ca/news/world/ferguson-fallout-lawmaker-ask-for-controls-on-military-giveaways-to-police/
Thu, 14 Aug 2014 22:55:58 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=594607Rep. Hank Johnson said Thursday that the death of an unarmed black teenager who was shot by police in Ferguson, Missouri shows the need for legislation

]]>WASHINGTON – A Democratic congressman plans to introduce a bill to restrict a Defence Department program that provides machine-guns and other surplus military equipment for free to local law enforcement agencies across the country.

Rep. Hank Johnson said Thursday that the death of an unarmed teenager who was shot by a police officer in a St. Louis suburb highlights the need for the legislation, which has been in the works for months. The bill comes as members of Congress have called for the Justice Department to investigate the shooting of a black teen by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.

Police in riot gear and military garb have clashed nightly with protesters since Aug. 9 shooting of Michael Brown and at times have trained weapons on them from armoured trucks.

Johnson said city streets should be a place for businesses and families, “not tanks and M16s.” He said a Pentagon program that transfers surplus military equipment to state and local law enforcement has led to police agencies resembling paramilitary forces.

“Militarizing America’s main streets won’t make us any safer, just more fearful and more reticent,” Johnson said Thursday. He said his bill would limit the type of military equipment that can be transferred to law enforcement, and require states to certify they can account for all equipment received.

The bill, to be introduced in September, targets a 24-year-old military surplus program that transfers equipment from blankets to bayonets and tanks to police and sheriff’s departments across the country. An Associated Press investigation last year of the Defence Department program found that a large share of the $4.2 billion in surplus military gear distributed since 1990 went to police and sheriff’s departments in rural areas with few officers and little crime.

A spokesman for the Republican leader of the House, Speaker John Boehner,declined to comment on Johnson’s proposal.

In response to the shooting, Boehner said in a statement: “I strongly support a full and thorough investigation of the events surrounding his death, and subsequent actions, including the detention of journalists covering this heartbreaking situation.”

Darryl Davies, a criminology instructor at Carleton University, says he brought a witness in a trial against two police officers to his class to enhance his students’ educations. Matt Skof, president of the Ottawa Police Association, saw the decision as so unprofessional that he asked Carleton’s president to condemn Davies and, after being rebuffed, says he will cut all ties with the school. Skof will no longer provide interviews to journalism students or help with projects in other departments.

The witness, Tasha Doucette, spoke to about 200 students in Davies’ second-year criminology class a few years ago. She told them about seeing an arrest after which two police officers were charged with assaulting a man in 2011. The police were acquitted last October after the evidence she gave was found by the judge to not be credible.

Skof complained to Carleton because he says there was a chance Doucette’s appearance in class could have tainted the court proceedings. The statements she made were public, he says, and the accused men could not defend themselves.

The Ontario Civil Liberties Association is siding with Davies and Carleton University. They submitted a complaint to the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD) on March 31 seeking investigation into, “what appear to be outright attempts to silence a professor’s criticisms of policing in Ontario.” They write that Skof’s “pressure” on Davies and the university to apologize is impeding freedom of speech. The OIPRD has accepted the complaint.

Doucette, who is a former student of Davies’, appeared on CTV television news with her story, which is what prompted the instructor to invite her into the classroom to recount what she saw and what it was like to be interviewed by the media, he says. It’s not unusual for him to bring guests. He’s had criminal lawyers, a chief of police and a justice minister, among others.

Skof says that he is not arguing against freedom of speech but that presenting only one side of the case was problematic. “Officers did not get chance to weigh in,” he says, “there was no follow-up… Students did not get to hear about what was wrong with [Doucette’s] perspective.”

By cutting ties with the university, he hopes to gain some leverage. “A resolution would be understanding,” he says, “that opinions put forward without a [basis in facts] have an effect. Opinion-based rhetoric is going to have consequences.”

Davies said he will not back down from his position. And if another opportunity to bring a witness to class presents itself? “I would do it in a nanosecond,” he says.

Amid growing concern over how police deal with some of society’s most vulnerable, law enforcement officials, those who live with mental illness and the people who support them have gathered to discuss what can be done to avert tragedies involving those in crisis.

That dialogue — deemed the first of its kind — comes at a time when statistics suggest one in five Canadians experience a mental health illness in any given year.

“It’s major step forward and a very bold step forward,” said Louise Bradley, CEO of the Mental Health Commission of Canada, which is hosting the conference in Toronto with the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.

One of the key issues police and mental health advocates have to grapple with is the lack of national standards — there isn’t a country-wide training curriculum for officers on how to deal with the mentally ill, nor is there comprehensive data collected on the issue.

Certain police forces have been singled out as “pockets of excellence,” while others lag behind, but across the country there’s a consensus that police are increasingly on the front lines of mental health care.

“Some areas in the country are handling the issue differently and perhaps better than others,” said Bradley. “That’s the whole purpose of this conference — to learn about that and to be able to share that information that’s critically important.”

The few figures available emphasize the need for a collaborative discussion — in Toronto police get 20,000 calls a year directly related to mental health issues while police in Vancouver say mental illness was a factor in 21 per cent of their calls last year.

Although the majority of those calls end peacefully, the handful that result in the death of a person in crisis has led to accusations of excessive police brutality.

One such instance was the case of Toronto teenager Sammy Yatim, who was shot multiple times while apparently wielding a knife on an empty streetcar. Another was the death of Michael Eligon, who died on a residential street after approaching officers with two pairs of scissors while wearing only a hospital gown and socks.

For Vancouver Police Chief Jim Chu, who is also the president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, altering the public’s perception of how officers deal with those in crisis is part of dealing with the issue.

“I know the public is concerned about the harm that can come to a loved one or friend who is afflicted with a mental illness,” he said. “Police want the person with the mental illness and also bystanders to be safe. And the police will, as professionally and diligently as possible, try to de-escalate confrontations and use force only as a last resort.”

The very nature of policing has changed over the last few years as apprehension under the Mental Health Act skyrocket, Chu said.

“One of the things I used to say was that police were the mental health response agency of last resort. The police are increasingly becoming the mental health response agency of first resort,” he said.

“With this new policing responsibility goes a mindset change that we need to engage in.”

The three-day meeting where that change in thinking is being discussed has drawn 320 participants to Toronto and is set to wrap up Wednesday afternoon.

A primary goal at the conference is information sharing to find out what works well and confront what doesn’t. The Mental Health Commission plans to keep that dialogue going by gathering information in a common space which can be accessed by police agencies and mental health workers across the country.

Another key issue the conference hopes to make progress on is the collection of hard figures to track and measure interactions between police and the mentally ill.

“Because it’s occupying so much police time we need to capture it better and in a more consistent standardized way across Canada,” said Chu, adding that statistics would help police forces argue for additional resources and useful partnerships.

“What gets measured gets worked on.”

Chu also welcomed more scrutiny of policing agencies.

“I’m not sure that there’s any more accountable profession these days than policing,” he said, pointing to coroner’s inquests, the criminal and civil courts and police watchdogs as venues where officers’ actions are reviewed time and again.

]]>Jury to return at inquest examining police shooting deaths of mentally illhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/jury-to-return-at-inquest-examining-police-shooting-deaths-of-mentally-ill/
Wed, 12 Feb 2014 13:45:31 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=504583TORONTO – The jury presiding over an inquest into the deaths of three mentally ill Toronto residents is expected to deliver its verdict today.
The inquest has been examining the…

]]>MONTREAL – Montreal police are to meet today with an officer who was captured on video telling a homeless man he would tie him to a pole for an hour in the freezing cold if his behaviour didn’t improve.

Police spokesman Ian Lafreniere said disciplinary measures could range from a verbal warning to a suspension.

The officer can be seen telling the man that if another citizen complained to police about him he would “tie him to a pole for an hour.”

The homeless man was wearing only a short-sleeved T-shirt and jean shorts that reached his calves.

Lafreniere said the officer’s comments during the exchange on Thursday afternoon, when Montreal was in the middle of a deep freeze, were “unacceptable” and “inexplicable.”

The comments were caught on tape by a passer-by who can be heard telling the officer he isn’t allowed to utter such threats.